Jean Villard-Gilles

Born on the Avenue des Alpes, 2 June 1895

Jean Villard was born in Montreux on 2 June 1895. A plaque marks his birthplace today, on the Avenue des Alpes. He would take the stage name Gilles, under which he became one of the fathers of French-Swiss song. At the Collège de Montreux, his classmate was Carlo Boller, the future founder of La Chanson de Montreux, with whom he stayed close.

His training was not that of a chansonnier but of a man of the theatre: he worked in the companies directed by Jacques Copeau, one of the major figures of the early twentieth-century French stage. It was then with Aman Maistre Julien that he formed the duo “Gilles et Julien”, which made his name in Paris.

1918: the Devil in “The Soldier’s Tale”

After struggling through the gymnase and then a boarding school in Solothurn, Jean Villard found at the University of Lausanne the friend he had been missing, the zoologist and writer Elie Gagnebin. It was he who, in 1918, brought him into the adventure of “The Soldier’s Tale” to play the role of the Devil. There Jean Villard met Igor Stravinsky, who composed the work, Ernest Ansermet, who conducted it, and Serge Diaghilev: he had found his calling.

A cabaret opened against Nazism

In 1940, as Europe was collapsing, Gilles founded the cabaret “Coup de Soleil” in Lausanne with Edith Burger. The place was no mere theatre of entertainment: it became an anti-Nazi gathering point, in a neutral country where caution was the rule.

That choice commits an artist known above all for his songs of the land. It is a reminder that French-Swiss song, at that moment, was not only a matter of landscapes.

The man who hired Jacques Brel

In 1947, Gilles opened his own cabaret in Paris, “Chez Gilles”. It was there that he heard an unknown young Belgian and hired him on the spot: Jacques Brel.

The same man kept a lasting friendship with Édith Piaf, who performed and popularised several of his compositions, beginning with “Les Trois Cloches”. His circle also included Ernest Ansermet, Jean Poiret and Michel Serrault; he crossed paths with Charles-Ferdinand Ramuz.

“La Venoge”, and what remains

“La Venoge”, a poem devoted to the small Vaud river, has become a cantonal emblem; its autograph manuscripts were acquired by the cantonal archives. Outside Switzerland, his best-known song remains “Les Trois Cloches”, carried by Édith Piaf.

A plaque marks his birthplace on the Avenue des Alpes in Montreux, and a park bears his name in Clarens. He died in Vevey on 26 March 1982, a few kilometres from the house where he was born.