page_title: History of music in Paris
section_title: The music hall—Mistinguett and Josephine Baker
hierarchical_section_title: History of music in Paris / The Années Folles (1919-1939) / The music hall—Mistinguett and Josephine Baker
caption_attribution_description: Français&#160;: Publicité pour la revue Paris qui brille au Casino de Paris, par Louis Gaudin dit Zig. Le personnage est Mistinguett. Nederlands: Programma. Casino de Paris.
context_page_description: The city of Paris has been an important center for European music since the Middle Ages. It was noted for its choral music in the 12th century, for its role in the development of ballet during the Renaissance, in the 19th century it became famous for its music halls and cabarets, and in the 20th century for the first performances of the Ballets Russes, its jazz clubs, and its part in the development of serial music. Paris has been home to many important composers, to name a few: Jean-Baptiste Lully, Jean-Philippe Rameau, Christoph Willibald Gluck, Niccolò Piccinni, Frédéric Chopin, Franz Liszt, Jacques Offenbach, Georges Bizet, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel, Hector Berlioz, Paul Dukas, Gabriel Fauré, César Franck, Charles Gounod, Jules Massenet, Vincent d'Indy, Camille Saint-Saëns, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Sidney Bechet...
context_section_description: The singer Mistinguett made her debut the Casino de Paris in 1895 and continued to appear regularly in the 1920s and 1930s at the Folies Bergère, Moulin Rouge and Eldorado. Her risqué routines captivated Paris, and she became one of the most highly-paid and popular French entertainers of her time.
  The Swedish ballet performing at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées closed in 1925, and its manager, André Davin, decided to create a musical show in the American style. He dispatched an American producer, Caroline Dudley, to New York, to recruit a company.  She went to Harlem and returned in September 1925 with a troupe of twenty-five black musicians, singers and dancers, including the pianist Claude Hopkins, the clarinetist Sidney Bechet and the twenty-five year old singer Josephine Baker.   The new show was called La Revue Nègre.  The director, Jacques Charles, recruited from the Moulin Rouge, persuaded Baker to perform a Charleston called  'Danse sauvage,' half-nude, wearing only ostrich feathers.  The audience at opening night on October 25, 1925 included Jean Cocteau, composers Darius Milhaud and Maurice Ravel, and fashion designer Paul Poiret.  The show was an immense success.  After a successful tour of Europe, Baker returned to France three months later to star at the Folies Bergère.  The Théâtre des Champs Élysées continued its American series in July 1926 with the first French performance of George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra   The other music halls, including the Casino de Paris, Moulin Rouge and les Ambassadeurs presented jazz reviews, while the main concert halls, Pleyel and Gaveau, offered symphonic jazz concerts.  New cabarets featuring jazz, including Bricktop's, the Boeuf sur le toit and Grand Écart opened, and American dance-styles, including the one-step, the fox-trot, the boston and the charleston, became popular in the dance halls.   .
  The music-halls suffered growing hardships in the 1930s, facing growing competition from movie theaters  The Olympia was converted into a movie theater, and others closed. But others continued to thrive;  In 1937 and 1930 the Casino de Paris presented shows with Maurice Chevalier, who had already achieved success as an actor and singer in Hollywood.
  One genre remained highly popular in Paris;  the Chanson réaliste;  dramatic, emotional, tragic songs about love and passion.  The leading singers of the genre were Yvonne George, Marie-Louise Damien and Fréhel.   1935, a twenty-year old singer named Édith Piaf was discovered in the Pigalle  by nightclub owner Louis Leplée, whose club Le Gerny, off the Champs-Élysées, was frequented by the upper and lower classes alike. He persuaded her to sing despite her extreme nervousness. Leplée taught her the basics of stage presence and told her to wear a black dress, which became her trademark apparel. Leplée ran an intense publicity campaign leading up to her opening night, attracting the presence of many celebrities, including Maurice Chevalier. Her nightclub appearance led to her first two records produced that same year, and the beginning of a legendary career that continued into the 1960s.
caption: Poster for Mistinguett at the Casino de Paris (1931)
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