Irène Joachim

Irène Joachim (13 March 1913 - 20 April 2001) was a French soprano, and later a vocal teacher.

Early life Daughter of German officer Herman Joachim and French violinist Suzanne Chaigneau, and granddaughter of the violinist Joseph Joachim, she learnt violin and piano as a child. She was bilingual in German and French.

Just before the outbreak of the First World War she and her parents left Paris for Berlin, staying in a pension in the Lutherstrasse for the remainder of the war. Her father died of tuberculosis in 1917, and due to the hardships of life in the German capital Joachim was sent back to France in the autumn of 1918, living with an aunt before her mother returned in 1920.

Due to health problems and her mother's professional life-style, Joachim was educated privately, firstly by Jeanne Favart. Afternoons were devoted to music studies : violin, piano and solfège. At the German invasion in 1940, along with many other Parisians she fled the city, but returned to the capital after the armistice.

Joachim is particularly remembered for her interpretation of Mélisande in Pelléas et Mélisande which she first sang at the Opéra-Comique on 12 September 1940, reprising it in France and abroad up to 1952; she recorded the role in April and May 1941 under Roger Désormière. While her operatic career continued, the post-war years saw Joachim develop a fruitful relationship in recital with Jane Bathori; later in the 1950s, with other accompanists she made several broadcasts for French radio. She participated in the premiere of Le Soleil des eaux by Pierre Boulez as well as of works by Henri Dutilleux, Wiener and Nigg. She was renowned for her impeccable diction.

Irène Joachim also sang German lieder such as Schubert, Schumann, Berg: she won a 'Grand Prix du Disque' in 1959 for her recording of lieder by Carl Maria von Weber. In 1956 Joachim's contract at the Opera-Comique concluded, but she went on to be active in broadcasting and recitals.

Filmography Joachim's first films date from her time at the Conservatoire; she took part in Jean Renoir's Les bas fonds (the voice of a cabaret singer) in 1936, and in La Marseillaise in 1937 (Madame de Saint-Laurent, singing and accompanying herself). She appeared and sang in the 1943 film Les anges du péché (Robert Bresson), and in 1951 La dernière étape by Wanda Jakubowska. In 1946 she became one of the first people to sing 'Feuilles mortes' by Kosma, with Yves Montand, in Les Portes de la nuit by Marcel Carné.