Under the spotlight of show business during his career, Michel Berger had found in the South of France a haven of peace, far from the bustle of Paris, TV shows or concerts. The late singer, whose 30th anniversary is “celebrating” on August 2, had thus bought a second home in the Var. A house, located in Ramatuellewhere he had lived with his wife France Gall.
That’s when he’s on vacation in his home called La Grande Baie, located in the Capon district and overlooking the bay of Pampelonne, that Michel Berger dies suddenly, victim of a heart attack at only 44 years old after a game of tennis. The singer used to hit the little yellow ball when he came to rest in the South, playing with his famous friends like Gérard Holtz and his ex-wife, on his land. “In Ramatuelle, nearly thirty years later, the pines still protect the house and its tennis court from the hot summer sun“, relates Var-Martinwho shares a photo, very rare, of the house in question.
When Michel Berger died, France Gall informed her friend, decorator Françoise Piault, that she wanted to keep this house. “For her, there is no question of selling. Ramatuelle was the family home where we continued to have children’s birthdays [le couple a eu Pauline et Raphaël, ndlr]. I had had little wooden kiosks designed which formed a sort of path in his garden. One of them was called ‘Maison des femmes’ and was dedicated to meditation“, confided the latter to Var-Morning.
If France Gall, who would not have been the last real “widow” of Michel Berger – it would be Béatrice Grimm -, therefore had a real attachment to this house in the Var, she nevertheless preferred that her husband be buried in Paris more than in the South. It is in the cemetery of Montmartre that rests the interpreter of the tubes A few words of love, The pianist’s groupie, white paradise or Will you be There. After a legal battle with her sister-in-law, Françoise Berger, the singer had finally obtained the transfer of her burial in the concession of their daughter Pauline, a few meters further. In 2012, the complex underwent some work to become a kind of glass house.