The chansonnière Carla Bruni will debut at Dubai Opera on September 27, singing in three languages: French, Italian, and English, even though, in most cases, she writes her lyrics in French, her adoptive language.
Carla was the face of the 1990s fashion world, with the likes of Eric Clapton and Mick Jagger falling for her beauty and wit. In 2008, the Italian-born supermodel became France’s new first lady, Madame Carla Bruni-Sarkozy. At 56, Carla had already multiple lives much like her feline friends. The style icon would be a cat if she were an animal. “I am a cat,” she recently said on an Italian TV show.
A millionaire Italian heiress with a bourgeois upbringing, little Carla lived in a Piedmontese castle near Turin, her birthplace, until she was five when her family fled to France in fear they might be selected as targets by leftist terrorists during Italy’s “years of lead.” So Carla grew up in Paris, their southern estate on the Côte d’Azur and Switzerland.
People love her sweet, airy vocals and compositions. What a person sings is an expression of who they are, and her melodies carry lyrics about the possibility of joy, but also mortality and solitude. Her songs are personal hymns to love where the charm of traditional folk tunes meets the catchy beats of pop. Even her covers of songs are highly personal. I love her version of a Rolling Stones hit, Miss You, so full of freshness and candour. It is included in the album French Touch. “For years, I sang iconic songs accompanied by my guitar before daring to write my own music,” she says.
In a phone conversation from her home in Paris, Carla talks about her career as a singer-songwriter and why she always sings from the heart. We conversed in our mother tongue, Italian.
Carla, you started your professional music career in 1997 and released your first album, Quelqu’un M’a Dit (Someone Told Me), five years later, in 2002. When did you realise you wanted to be a singer?
I started writing little songs and poems as a child, and when I began my modelling career, I certainly didn’t see music as a job. Music was just a moment of relaxation and pleasure for me. As a model, I always went around with my guitar and played in the evenings in hotels and on trips. Mine was a solitary job, so music was always very close to me. When I was 28 or 29, the modelling work started slowly to decrease; naturally, I got more productive with music, and at that point, I started recording my songs. And from there, the thing took its course and I became a professional singer-songwriter.
Was it like filling the vacuum?
Exactly, it did fill a vacuum with something I had been doing by instinct since I was a little girl. Yet music became my reality when I started recording it. I could listen to the material I created. I could modify it, elaborate it, and be able to work on it. By recording my songs, I was able to clarify them.
Your voice has a sweet timbre with a light vibrato. It has a calming effect. How do you cultivate it to maintain its naturalness?
We can’t choose our voice. I try to treat my voice well, even when I’m on tour, like this summer mini-tour. I have a voice that is in two different rooms. One is a room that wants to be heard. The other is shy. When I sing I am in between these two places. You noticed my vibrato which is very Italian. Many Italian voices have this vibrato and a little bit of ‘sand,’ a little ‘dust.’
You grew up in a musical family. Your mother, Marisa Borini, was a concert pianist; your legal father, Alberto Bruni Tedeschi, was a tyre magnate from Turin and a well-known classical composer while your biological father, Maurizio Remmert, is an Italian-Brazilian entrepreneur and classical guitarist. How much did breathing classical and contemporary music influence you?
Music was so important in my family of origin. Not only were my parents musicians, but they also listened to music a lot. Music saves the lives of human beings because it changes the atmosphere and the situation. Vibration is the reality of our life. Growing up in a house of musicians, music and I lived closely together in symbiosis.
You dated Eric Clapton. At 22, you befriended Mick Jagger. Did they ever give you advice for your music career?
They were musical masters, yet not on a direct level. After all, they were masters for everyone. They are rock music titans, and observing them while they were working was a privilege. Their lives were full of music. But the most interesting part is not the fact of knowing them. I have learned from listening to them and assimilating their inspirations. Let’s take Bob Dylan, for example. He absorbed so much history of the blues. So did Clapton and the Stones. They had such rich layers of knowledge, passion and feeling for blues music. Clapton is one of the greatest white blues musicians of all time.
From 19 to 30, you were one of the highest-paid supermodels and worked for the top fashion designers. You said you had a lot of fun with them, from Versace to Dolce & Gabbana to Karl Lagerfeld for Chanel to Yves Saint-Laurent. Do you feel nostalgic about those years? And what do you miss least from the profession and that milieu?
I don’t miss my youth but if one can be nostalgic for something, perhaps one can be nostalgic for one’s youth, a period of ‘unconsciousness’. I’m generally not a nostalgic person. However, I am prone to melancholy.
What is your relationship with Dubai?
I know Dubai quite well. I have been there about ten times. I find it a very international place. It’s young, emerging, and very creative. In Dubai I felt a positive, uplifting energy and strong vibrations.
How will you engage the Emirati audience at the Dubai Opera on Friday night?
I am thrilled to sing in Dubai. I performed there only once during a party hosted by fashion editor Franca Sozzani. It was a private little concert. This time is different. My Dubai Opera concert is my musical debut in front of the Dubai audience in a real theatre. The show will end my acoustic summer tour. It is a sweet, unplugged pure acoustic concert.
You will sing your hit Quelq’un m’a dit on the guitar. The song is now a classic full of mystery and magic from the eponymous debut folk-pop album, which features confessional songs about your love life. What does the hit represent for you? And how did it come about?
Quelq’un m’a dit is a song that is a bit of a classical antiquity. It comes from a part of the soul that is a bit secret and hidden, even from myself, not only from others.
And mysterious?
I think so. Yes, it is a mysterious song for me, too, because it does not speak of love but of the hope of love. It does not speak of an existing love but of one that may not exist yet or is not even certain. It speaks of something undefined, almost vague. Imagining love is so beautiful when you are at the beginning of a love story. It is the most beautiful moment when you meet someone. It is a confusing feeling. When you are in love, you cannot think of anything else. This song also says, ‘Maybe this love is not reciprocated’. It’s all unknown. I think that’s why people all over the world know the song and love it.”
Is there a singer or musician of Arabic music from the past or present that you admire?
I adore Oum Kalthoum. She is my favourite singer. Also French singer Dalida sang wonderfully in Arabic because she was Egyptian. But Oum Kalthoum was a genius. Her nuanced voice was so powerful and expressive. I’m also fond of a young Italian singer of Arabic descent. His name is Mahmood.
Are you writing new songs?
Yes, I am writing songs, as always.
Where do you find inspiration?
My inspiration comes from a personal emotion. Sometimes, it can also come from something external to myself. I can be inspired by something that happens to you, for example. But it always comes from an emotion. I never write with my mind. I never say now I write a song about tulips or rain. I can listen to Oum Kalthoum, and when her iridescent voice moves me, I start writing a song. I have never been able to write while thinking. Writing is not a thought for me, but a feeling.
L’amoureuse is a beautiful love song from your third studio album, Comme si de rien n’était (2008). You were the first lady of France then. Being Sarkozy’s wife, has it represented more advantages or disadvantages for your artistic-musical activity?
From a creative point of view, it was an advantage. It did me good because you are inspired when you fall in love. But from the point of view of public concerts, I had to stop. But it must be said that I am not one of those musicians who do 300 concerts a year. It is not my prototype. It is not my way of functioning. Of course, I stopped playing in public those years, but I continued to write, sing, and participate in radio broadcasts. The wife of the President of the French Republic must be protected a little (for security reasons). But also I believe it would be too convenient to do concerts escorted by police.
Do you and your husband, former French president Sarkozy, share the same musical tastes?
We have quite different tastes. My husband loves the masters of the French Art Song. But we also share a common taste.
What is the name of the singer you both love?
Elvis Presley, for his enchanting voice, charisma, wonderful face, stage presence. He didn’t write any songs but was the most amazing interpreter of songs in a way that few people before and after have ever been.
Your recent song, Rien que l’extase is about love and death, two sure things in our existence. Un grand amour from your sixth, latest album, Carla Bruni, is a modern sweet waltz underlining the importance of having a great love in life: Romantic love or the unconditional love of a mother to her child or a child to a parent. In the official video, your mother and your sister, the actor Valeria Bruni Tedeschi, figured. Valeria is next to you in another song from the same eponymous album. The song, in Italian, is called Voglio l’amore (feat. Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), or I Want Love. Are love songs your fertile ground?
Yes. Love is always a very stimulating theme, always very inspiring. The feeling of love is a movement. It always infuses a lot of life. I sing love easily, I would say.
