Icon of Parisian evenings and the world of the night, the singer Régine, died this Sunday, May 1, announced her family.
Régine was nicknamed the “Queen of the night” because of the many discos she hosted in Paris and around the world. Singer, businesswoman and actress, Régine has made Parisian evenings vibrate all her life. She died at age 92. Owner of many discotheques in France and abroad, she had long welcomed the “all-Paris” who came to party there, all night long. She was just called Régine, a first name that has become as famous as her red hair and the characters in her songs, like the great Zoa, a transvestite. Characters she rubbed shoulders with in the world of the night, of which she had become the queen by directing, over time, up to 18 nightclubs.
She owned up to 22 nightclubs
She assumed her flashy outfits, because, as a child, Régina Zylberberg had suffered both from poverty and from the persecution of the Jews during the war. Régine discovers the first nightclubs in the 1950s. A friend entrusts her with the animation of a discotheque in the center of Paris, rue de Beaujolais, “le Whiskey à gogo“, where she meets a beginner named Serge Gainsbourg. The young girl knows how to set the mood, sometimes has fun dancing with a full glass on her head, but prides herself on never drinking alcohol. She then decided to be called only by her first name and to open, in 1956, her own establishment, “Chez Régine“, near the Champs-Elysées, in the Latin quarter of Paris. The success of this sequined and felted box is immediate. It receives many personalities, such as Yves Saint Laurent and Françoise Sagan. The international jet-set crowd quickly into his nightclub. She owned up to 22 nightclubs that bore her first name around the world, starting with the mythical “Chez Régine”, near the Champs-Elysées.
She sang at the Carnegie Hall
Her first name has thus become “the emblem of crazy nights until the early morning“. Régine also tries her hand at singing. Her career as a singer really took off in 1965. Her voice seduced the greatest composers. She owes her first success to Serge Gainsbourg who wrote her “Les Petits papiers”. In the 1960s, she sang at Carnegie Hall in New York, becoming – with Edith Piaf in particular – one of the rare French women to have conquered America.
