(Paris) Joséphine Baker with her horse at the artists’ bar: this is one of the photos in the book released Thursday for the 130th anniversary of L’Olympia, “a room like no other”, as its general director Laurent de Cerner says.
In another photo, dated 1971, we see Michel Sardou, at the end of his concert, acclaimed by Mireille Mathieu, Michel Delpech and Régine, standing in the front row. “The show is also in the room,” laughs Laurent de Cerner to AFP, who arrived in 2015 as financial director for a few months, before becoming general manager of the famous room on Boulevard des Capucines, in Paris.
L’Olympia, scene of legends (Editions Le Cherche Midi) looks back on more or less well-known episodes. Like that evening that got out of hand, on October 19, 1955, when Sidney Bechet received his gold record at the Olympia and invited his audience for free: “2000 repressed jazz fanatics” and “200 broken armchairs,” we read in the clippings newspapers of the time reproduced.
The greatest have been there, like the Beatles, on January 17, 1964, who suffered three power cuts, the recording of the concert by Europe 1 having caused an electrical overload which blew up the sound system.
The book obviously reserves several pages for the passage from 1954 to 1979 of Bruno Coquatrix, general director who remains in the legend. Édith Piaf, who had recorded five live albums in the room, performed there out of friendship for him during times of empty boxes.
The room was born in 1893 under the leadership of Joseph Oller – a jack of all trades who was also the inventor of the future PMU – on the site of an old roller coaster. During the interwar period, the Olympia transformed into a cinema. The enclosure once again became a place dedicated to music hall in the 1950s, which coincided with the arrival of Coquatrix. The room experienced a final upheaval in the 1990s, with a move and an identical reconstruction a few meters further on.
“I always come back home and, each time, I get a little thrill,” testifies Véronique Sanson in the book.
“This year, we will have 280 dates for more than 500,000 spectators. We are breaking filling records at the level of 2019, the highest year,” describes Laurent de Cerner.
A documentary for the 130th anniversary will be broadcast on Canal at the end of the year and presented in preview on December 19 at L’Olympia. Artists will deliver “their unique relationship with this room” and the screening will be followed by “an evening with a mini-concert by a mystery artist then a party”, presents Laurent de Cerner.
The Olympia has been owned by the Vivendi group since 2001.
