Their first public concert together!
In Villars-les-Dombes, in Ain, on the stage set up in the middle of nature at the end of the Bird Park pond, the shock duo formed by Vitaa and Slimane makes their entrance with a little apprehension in this Friday, September 4.
"This is the first time that we have the chance to sing in public the songs of our album
VersuS
", explains the singer.
“In the spring, after three months spent rehearsing with Slimane and two days before the premiere, everything stopped.
"
But a few months later, the confinement linked to Covid-19 forgotten, they are back on stage.
"Tonight, we can just do our job", rejoices Slimane, singing "It's going to come" with his accomplice, then continue with "XY".
The public is there, euphoric, the current goes.
Teens and their families know the lyrics by heart and sing behind their masks.
"Seven months that we no longer sang, we felt punished"
Then the winner of “The Voice” 2016 asks his stage partner: “Can you leave them to me for a few songs?
"Vitaa slips away, and Slimane takes again solo," Farewell "," The song of the old lovers "in homage to Jacques Brel," Viens we love "... And delivers his pleasure to find his audience.
"We never realize what we have before having lost it", he assures, "thank you for making me live this moment".
Then it is Vitaa who takes the microphone alone to evoke her childhood in the Lyon region, very close to here, giving in passing some confidences to the fans of the duo: “We worked all summer with Slimane to release a new one soon. album, there is an extract which is already turning a little at the moment… ”It is“ It will go ”and the public is obviously won over.
The two artists too.
“We haven't been singing for seven months, we felt punished,” explains the former coach of The Voice in Belgium, “so tonight, it feels good!
".
The return of the singers on stage this Friday evening is almost a miracle.
Les Musicales du Parc des oiseaux in Villars-les-Dombes is one of the few festivals that has not been canceled in France.
But its maintenance owes nothing to chance and its director, Emmanuel Visentin, had to completely rethink his organization.
“In June, I started to think about how we could fit out this site,” he explains.
"The old one accommodated 1200 people, with the barrier measures, we would have fallen to 600 or 800, impossible to make profitable".
On the 345 hectares of this ornithological park which hosts more than 3000 birds, he therefore went in search of a new location.
This is how he arranged, always in the open air, and at the end of this wild body of water where hundreds of birds frolic, a stage overlooked by bleachers of 2000 seats.
“By respecting the barrier measures, we can accommodate between 1,200 and 1,300 people per concert,” he says.
Faced with demand, two concerts in the same evening
The artists have, with a few exceptions, played the game and honored their commitments, as if too happy to resume the road and the stage.
After Julien Clerc, Zazie, Angélique Kidjo, Vitaa and Slimane, the Musicales are still waiting for Ibrahim Maalouf, Daniel Guichard and Maxime Le Forestier, Yannick Noah, Véronique Sanson, Sanseverino, Cali and others… The public is also present at the meeting -you: "The seats leave very, very quickly, the gauge is quickly filled", underlines the organizer, observing the festival-goers who do not hesitate to wear their mask throughout the concert.
For the star duo this Friday, the public demand was so strong that the Musicales even had to offer two concerts in the same evening, with each time 1200 spectators.
Antoine, Elsa and their two daughters aged 12 and 14 came from Bourg-en-Bresse to attend the concert.
The girls know the songs like the back of their hand and go at them at the top of their lungs.
"We are impressed by Slimane, he really has a particular grain of voice," comments Antoine.
On the way back, fans play back the videos of the concert: “He has a voice, Slimane.
That's a singer, and not a puppet, ”rejoices Pierre, in his sixties, also with his family.