Talk about musical education around you, and you will hear as many people who regret that their parents did not push them to persevere in music theory as people who still have not understood what was expected of them by putting them a recorder between his paws. And do musician parents, those for whom music has succeeded, send their children to the conservatory or do they let them listen to their desires? This was the essential question to ask singer Natalie Dessay, 58 years old, mother of two musical children: Tom, 28 years old, saxophonist, and Neïma, 25 years old, singer.
In 2025, Natalie Dessay will be performing in two musicals, including, at the Philharmonie de Paris, Gypsy, created on Broadway in 1959. She will play Rose, a mother in America in the 1930s and the Great Depression who would like to make her two young daughters music hall stars, in order to live vicariously the career of which she dreamed. It is precisely Neïma Naouri who will play one of these roles. This is not the first time they will perform together. With her children and their father, the baritone Laurent Naouri, the singer, who left opera in 2013 for theater, jazz and song, never misses an opportunity to sing as a family, as “a sort of von Trapp family of The melody of happiness »she says in reference to the tribe of the Austrian singer Maria Augusta von Trapp, whose autobiography inspired, in 1959, the creation of one of the biggest hits on Broadway.
The first time you felt like a mother?
Quite simply when I gave birth to my son.
Have you ever cried in front of your children?
Yes, but I’m not going to tell you why, it’s too private. I believe that you shouldn’t hide from children, because they sense when something is wrong. It seems to me that we need to inform them as soon as possible that we are not superheroes, that we don’t know everything, that we don’t always have the solutions or the answers to questions.
Worst thing you’ve said to your children?
When my son asked me what I preferred between my job and my children, I answered “both”. It was a mistake to say it, because we can’t put them on the same level, and then because I understood later that it wasn’t even true. And even if I believed it then, there was no point saying it. It is better to tell children that they are the center of our world to reassure them.
Your favorite story to read to them?
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