Germaine Montero

Singer/actress Germaine Montero ranked among France’s most admired vocalists in the mid-20th century, yet her repertoire spanned many countries and she balanced her working life equally between music and stage performance. Born Germaine Berthe Caroline Heygel in Paris in 1909, she stepped onto the boards at eighteen in a theater run by the celebrated Spanish playwright Frederico Garcia Lorca. In the years that followed she earned praise for interpretations of Spanish drama, French chanson, and plays by Bertolt Brecht. A landmark portrayal came in 1952 when she played the title role in Mere Courage—Brecht’s Mother Courage as staged in France—at Paris’s Theatre National Populaire. Shortly afterward she issued her debut album, Folk Songs of Spain on Vanguard, which received the Grand Prix du Disc and opened the door to a second LP, Songs of Parisian Nights. The same Paris engagement with Brecht material also produced a third Vanguard release titled Mere Courage. Eventually her film and theater commitments overshadowed further recordings; by the time of her death in 2000 Montero had accumulated credits in more than two dozen motion pictures plus a wide array of stage productions.