Born in the San Telmo district of Buenos Aires, Haydée Alba began studying classical singing at an early age and completed her studies with theatre and popular music. In the late 1970s, she travelled throughout Argentina to learn about the country’s folklore, studied the history of tango and worked on her repertoire with great composers such as Leon Bernaros and Homero Expósito. She began her career singing in theatres in the Argentinian capital and also made a name for herself by hosting a music programme on national radio. She arrived in Paris in 1986, and for three months she headlined Les Trottoirs de Buenos Aires, the tango club, and has since led a career in Europe. After a first album recorded in 1990 for Radio France’s Ocora label, she performed at the Centre Pompidou in a show that adapted Jorge Luis Borges’ poems to music and reintroduced the barrel organ into tango. This directory was then recorded. Director Alfredo Arias gave her roles in his plays “Mortadela”, which won the Molière award for best musical performance in 1993, then “Faust argentin”, in 1995. An ambassador of tango committed to tradition as much as to the exploration of innovative paths, she is the first popular music artist who was invited to sing at the Opéra Bastille, where she offered a series of ten concerts in December 1999.
