Dina Vierny, une voix libre

Hailing from Russia, muse to the sculptor Maillol, friend of the Surrealists, Resistance fighter, gallery owner, singer and tireless activist… Dina Vierny was, in the 20th century, a voice of freedom like no other. At a time when survivors of the Gulag were returning home, she also served as the conduit for the songs born in the camps. Collected in secret and learnt by heart, they travelled with her, preserved in her memory, all the way to France, where Dina Vierny recorded them in 1975. With just a few weeks to go before the premiere of a show in her honour, the singer and director Stéphanie Acquette rediscovers Vladimir Kudryavtsev’s double bass and performs these ‘Songs of Today’s Siberian Prisoners’… Somewhere between humour and drama, a moment of vital poetry at a time when freedom is once again being crushed, in Russia and elsewhere.