Michel Valette

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Michel Valette (14 June 1928 – 14 March 2016) was a French cabaret performer, actor, composer, cartoonist and writer. In 1954 he opened La Colombe, a cabaret in Paris on the Île de la Cité. Over the next decade it became a launching pad for more than 200 artists, including Guy Béart, Anne Sylvestre, Pierre Perret, Jean Ferrat, Georges Moustaki, Marc Ogeret and Romain Bouteille.

In 1964 Valette became artistic director of the Cabaret Arsouille Milord. The venue was noted in programs featuring stars such as Catherine Sauvage, Serge Gainsbourg, Guy Béart and Helene Martin. In 1969 he founded SDA Mouffe (Service Diffusion Artistique) and hosted at the old Theatre Mouffetard for four and a half years, while also directing the theatre’s administration.

Valette expanded into film and theatre in the mid-1970s, starring in Claude Chabrol’s Une Partie de Plaisir, with other film work by Jean Delannoy and Paul Vecchiali, as well as television appearances. In 1989 he appeared at the Chaillot theatre as the Duke of Rochefort in D’Artagnan, directed by Jérôme Savary and Christophe Malavoy. He was part of the Théâtre des Cinquante led by Andreas Voutsinas and performed at Théâtre La Bruyère. He toured in Le Malade Imaginaire, playing Jacques Béralde Fabbri, and acted in Karamazov at Cartoucherie de Vincennes and La Rochelle, directed by Anita Picchiarini, where he played the Starets.

In 1988 Valette performed Do that Love at the Arlequin and recorded his first dozen songs on several CDs, including Michel Valette sings Gilbert Hennevic. He wrote De Verdun à Cayenne, the true story of Robert Porchet, a WWI peace activist who deserted Verdun, was captured and sent to Cayenne until his sentence was shortened.

From 1993 to 2000 he founded Chant’Essonne, a cultural association in Essonne dedicated to promoting French song. By December 2008 he had written L’histoire de la Colombe, a 600-page book filled with anecdotes about the beginnings of many French singers in the 1960s, and he was working on a shorter edition of Le Joli temps de la Colombe to broaden access.