She makes six or seven albums a year aimed at specific language markets-two in French, two in Italian, one or two in English and one in German (in Germany, she says, albums do not sell as well as single disks). She contributes a cooking column to a German weekly paper, Das Neue Blatt, dictating it on tape wherever she hannens to he.Įven Miss Valente's recording activities have an unusual international aspect. She is very bad on baking but strong with garlic. This is when she indulges her penchant for cooking, which comes out French, Italian and Chinese. Miss Valente takes two or three months off each year from her international travels and settles clown at her home in Lugano, Switzerland, or at an apartment in Acapulco, Mexico. But during a three‐week stay in Japan she not only developed a Japanese repertory but also appeared on seven Japanese television programs on which she spoke the introductions to her longs in Japanese (“Phoneticaly,” she hastens to add). She was in Athens for only 10 days so she managed to master only a single Greek song. Japanese and Greek are two rec nt additions to her repertory, the result of her determination to do a considerable part of her program in the language of the country she happens to be in.
CATERINA VALENTE SONGS PLUS
She sings in all six languages (Italian is the best for singing, she says) plus Dutch, Portuguese, Hebrew, Greek and Japanese. Later she added English, Spanish and Swedish, but French is the language in which she feels in most at home. The following year, she was bestowed an ECHO Lifetime Achievement Award.Miss Valente, who was born in France, oined the family act when she was 5 and grew up speaking French, Italian and German. In 2002, just prior to her official retirement, she paired with harpist Catherine Michel for Girl Talk, which found her revisiting some of her favorite songs from her career. Valente retreated into semi-retirement in the '90s, making the occasional live appearance. She continued recording into the mid-'80s, issuing Caterina 86, a recording made with the Count Basie Orchestra. Her version of "La Golondrina" appeared on one of the first charity albums, 1963's All Star Festival, whose proceeds aided refugees.nn In the mid-'70s, Valente married her musical director, British jazz pianist Roy Budd, although the marriage was short-lived. During the '50s and '60s she notched hits in the charts of many countries, including Italy ("Till," "Personalita," "Nessuno al Mondo"), Germany ("Ganza Paris Träumt von der Liebe," "Wo Meine Sonne Scheint," "Steig in das Traumboot der Liebe"), and France ("Bimbombey," "39 Fievere," "Saitôn-Jamais"). By this time, Valente had become a truly multilingual artist, performing her cabaret act and issuing recordings in six languages: French, German, Italian, English, Spanish, and Swedish. "Malagueña" was her first big hit, followed by "Andalucia," which, when re-released in an English version as "The Breeze and I," became a Top Ten hit in both the U.K. Two songs written by Cuban composer Ernesto Lecuona charted in Europe and eventually England and the U.S. She was soon signed to Polydor and made her recording debut, Bouquet de Mélodies, in 1955.nn Her first big hits came soon after that on albums like The Hi-Fi Nightingale and Olé Caterina. She performed in Europe as a singer for several years (and in a duo with her brother Silvio Francesco), but her career as an internationally known vocalist began in 1953 when she joined Kurt Edelhagen's band in Germany. Her mother was a clown and her father was an accordion player as a child she worked in the circus as well. Born in Paris, France in 1931, Valente grew up in an Italian circus family. A gifted singer, guitarist, and dancer, Caterina Valente is a multilingual artist who emerged in Europe during the 1950s and became one of the most beloved and iconic performers of her generation.