Deeply religious, she dreamed of ending her days in a Carmel.
Linda de Suza finally died at the age of 74 at Gisors hospital in Eure, not far from her Norman home.
She suffered from covid and had been received in the emergency room on Wednesday morning at 8 a.m.
The interpreter of
the Stranger
whose glory years are between 1978 and 1984 had been persuaded for years to attend apparitions of Jesus.
She forgot to feed herself.
The pandemic, the strained relations with his son and his grandchildren had not helped.
Smoke two to three packs of cigarettes a day, either.
She, whose voice was compared to that of Amalia Rodrigues, the queen of Fado, had given her last concert in 2019 in Champigny in the south-east of Paris.
Read alsoLinda de Suza, cardboard suitcase and velvet voice
Linda de Suza sings
L'Étrangère,
lyrics by Didier Barbelivien
Born on February 22, 1948 under the Salazar dictatorship in the arid Alentejo plains in southern Portugal, she came from a poor family of eight children.
The childhood of Téolinda Lança (De Suza is her mother's name) was tough.
As she tells in
La Valise en carton
, a bestseller that has sold 2 million copies since 1984, she was five years old when her mother put her in boarding school with the nuns.
Téolinda is ordered to stop her studies at the age of eleven and works as a cleaning lady or in the factory.
In 1972 at the age of 24, she arrived in France illegally with her four-year-old son.
She learns French thanks to the photo novels of the magazine
Nous-Deux
, raises her son alone and multiplies the odd jobs of maid and waitress.
Fan of Dalida, she sings between two services and was noticed in 1978 at Chez Louisette, the flea market in Saint-Ouen.
Word of mouth starts, she is hired to sing in weddings, bar mitzvahs.
"
In a few months, I went from my maid's vacuum cleaner to a singer's microphone
," she said.
Spotted by composer Alex Alstone (Symphony) and produced by Vline Buggy, historical lyricist of Claude François, Linda de Suza signs with Claude Carrère.
His first television is with Michel Drucker in
Les Rendez-vous du dimanche
.
She is 30 years old and replaces at short notice Claude François who has just died.
The success is overwhelming.
“Linda de Suza is the first singer to address a foreign community by adapting her French successes in her language
,” underlines Jean-Pierre Pasqualini, program director for Melody TV and specialist in French song.
Linda de Suza sings
Tiroli Tirola
Its triumph comes four years after the Carnation Revolution.
Its “
fado
” variety seduces the 1.2 million Portuguese expatriates in France.
His repertoire ranges from moving texts like
A Portuguese
to
Tiroli Tirola
where the spectators set the room on fire by clapping their hands.
Linda de Suza sings of their roots, where Lio, also Portuguese, symbolizes European integration.
Linda de Suza is surrounded by the best authors and composers.
Didier Barbelivien
(The Stranger
), Pascal Auriat
(The Girl Who Wept
), Charles Aznavour (
You've Changed Everything
) and Louis Amade (
Jeannot
) wrote for her.
And Jean-Claude Petit signs the arrangements!
In 1983, five years after being discovered at the Flea Market, her name appeared in red letters on the front of the Olympia.
“The idol of the maids”
will be a full house there for two weeks in a row.
His debut on
Grandola Vila Morena
, a very slow song from the south of Portugal, brings tears to the audience for whom this dapper brunette is a model of success.
Close to President Mario Soares, she is often invited to dinner at the Élysée.
And when Jacques Chirac nicknamed her "
his little princess
", the one who sings
You, my hidden love
must deny having an affair with the mayor of Paris.
Linda de Suza sings
You, my hidden love
In January 1986, she was the godmother of Portugal's entry into Europe.
Then begins its slow disappearance.
His entourage changes and the musical comedy taken from his autobiography is a failure but is nevertheless adapted into a television series with Souad Amidou.
In 2015, after the Age Tendre tours, she published
Des tears of silver
where she tells the hidden side of her success.
Until the end of her life, she will have been persuaded to have been cheated by the world of publishing and show business.
"Like Sheila and Karen Cheryl, Linda de Suza signed contracts which certainly benefited her producers, but the reality is more nuanced
," said Fabien Lecoeuvre, her agent since 2012.