Although she was considered the tita of Catalonia, Núria Feliu was an artist with international projection, and always singing in Catalan. Her popular image hid everything that the artist from Sants did for Catalan music, music in Catalan and the country’s culture. Who died in July 2022, the Palau Robert hosts an exhibition that remembers all the facets of this pioneer of jazz and bolero in Catalan, curated by Òscar Dalmau, with a script by Julià Guillamon: Núria Feliu al Palau (Robert)
As a good heiress of Mistinguett, a renowned French star of the first half of the 20th century, Núria Feliu welcomed her audience singing the Catalan version of Je vous ai reconnu, which begins like this: “I have recognized you, friends who ‘you have come to see’, and that is the song that greets visitors to the exhibition, next to a sign from the Sants metro stop, a gift from Josep Maria Bachs, which the artist liked to show off in photographs.
“Before singing, she performed experimental theater and recorded some albums as a narrator,” explains Dalmau, who treasures a good part of the discotheque that the artist gave her. “Her first musical group was Nuri with Donald Duc, “without the k”, she points out, between 1960 and 1962. In 1965 she signed with the Edigsa label, and here she began her professional career as a singer. “That same year she recorded the first jazz album in the entire State, when all the singer-songwriters were reflected in the chanson.”
On May 8, 1965, Gent premiered at the Palau de la Música, and six months later he returned to perform with Serrat and Raimon, a debut in style. That same year, through the intermediation of the journalist Albert Mallofré, he met the pianist Tete Montoliu, and a fruitful relationship began that would be reflected in memorable concerts and recordings.
In 1967, the Spanish Chamber of Commerce in New York organized Barcelona Week and the closing ceremony took place in the main hall of the legendary Waldorf Astoria hotel, where Núria Feliu gave a recital accompanied by Tete Montoliu. The New York public is dazzled and discovers with surprise that jazz can also be sung in Catalan.
“Although he has only been at Edigsa for a year and a half, he has already recorded 6 albums, which bring together 36 songs, and then he made the jump to Hispavox,” Dalmau continues.
“There are people who believe that musicals in Catalan began with Àngels Gonyalons, but in 1965 Feliu was already singing the song People, from the musical Funny girl.” Dalmau explains that the singer often traveled to London to see musicals and buy records: “She brought them and asked her friends who collaborated with her to make versions in Catalan. Cabaret, for example, sang it before the soundtrack arrived here.” Among these collaborators were lyricists such as Josep Maria Andreu, Jaume Picas and Jordi Sarsanedes, and musicians such as Lleó Borrell, Francesc Burrull and Antoni Ros Marbà.
The exhibition also recovers an unreleased TVE recording in which the artist sings in English in 1971, and also recorded some songs in Spanish, “which were the toll to appear on TVE singing in Catalan.” The result is that, when he did a program, the Catalan songs changed, “and the ones he did in Spanish were always the same.”
Núria Feliu was very successful throughout Spain. In 1965, for example, the best singers of the year were her and Raphael, and the best group, Los Brincos. Dalmau considers that her success lies in the fact that she “not only sings, she also interprets.” He managed to “take the public from nova cançó to the discos.” And she was a provocateur: in the exhibition you can see an album in which, on side A, Jesus Christ Superstar sings, and on side B, Emmanuelle.
One of her friends, Enric Majó, designed dresses and sets for her. “I saw her at the Papagayo cabaret singing El clar País, by Jacques Brel, translated into Catalan, and I was so dazzled that I went in to greet her,” declares the actor. Núria made everything easy and that’s where our friendship began. When she saw my Terra baixa, where I had done the scenery and costumes for her, she asked me to do it for her, and we put on three shows in the Venus Dome.”
Since Hispavox did not want to produce a bolero album in Catalan, “because they did not see it clearly”, she became an entrepreneur and created Núria Feliu Produccions. To complete the exhibition, open until May 19, two concerts will be held at the Palau Robert (IV 14 and V 19), and another at the Palau de la Música on May 15. The artist’s brother, Albert Feliu, remembers that “she always defended the Catalan language by doing what she knew how to do: sing.”
“It has been proven that everything can be sung in Catalan; “This language has wonderful monosyllables,” said Núria Feliu.
