Cabaret as a forum for expression is the best school in which to train artistes,writers, composers and performers. In France, there is great artistic potential in all these fields; the proof lies in the number of auditions requested by the young artistes of Paris and the provinces who wish to perform in public.

As the Quebecois author Doris Lussier writes in Le Père Gédéon: "The cabaret is an art school of the highest value. There are no teachers as in the conservatory, but there is a public who teach you the things that you would never learn in the big professional schools. The best teacher that an artiste can have is the public. That is true and has always been the case. For the cabaret, however, it is particularly true, because there the public is uninhibited. By that, I mean it is not mesmerized by the slightly stiff atmosphere of conventional theatre.

Here we are at ease and can let our hair down. We express spontaneously what we are feeling and applaud or whistle without embarrassment or constraint." The Lapin Agile is the perfect definition of the artistic cabaret. Everyone, artiste and audience, combines to form a company to cross the time barriers.

They take pleasure in singing together old provincial songs and discovering unknown artistes -- poets, writer-composers, musicians, humorists and singers.

Just before the turn of the century, Frédé, that unforgettable figure in Montmartre, gave a definite artistic impetus to the cabaret. For the first time, perhaps, the different arts were in harmony. Writers, poets, musicians, comedians, painters, sculptors, -- all unknown at the time -- were united, criticizing, poking fun, even influencing each other. The historic richness of the Lapin Agile was born in the evenings, around the guitar and cello of Père Frédé, when everyone played, recited, sang their music and joined together singing popular songs. Their common denominator : humour in friendship. These "unknowns" were called Picasso, Utrillo, Derain, Braque, Modigliani, Guillaume Apolinaire, Max Jacob.

In 1905, Picasso gave his famous painting "Au Lapin Agile" to the cabaret, wherein Picasso is represented as a harlequin and Frédé plays the guitar. This painting belonged to the cabaret for years; until, in 1912, Frédé sold it for twenty dollars... In 1989, it was auctioned at Sotheby's for 41 million dollars!

Of all the stories which make up the folklore of the Lapin Agile, perhaps the most famous is the legend of the painter "Boronali" whose work ,exhibited at the annual Salon des Independants in Paris in 1910, earned lavish praise from the leading art critics of the time. The admiration turned into laughter when it became known that the picture "Sunset on the Adriatic sea" had been painted in front of the door of the Lapin Agile, and before an officier of the court, by Frédé's donkey Lolo, to whose tail Dorgelès and Warnod had tied a paint brush !

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Aristide Bruant bought The Lapin Agile to save it from demolition. He sold it again, in 1922 under the most favorable terms to Paulo, the son of Frédé. Under Paulo's management and later with his wife, the singer Yvonne Darle, the Lapin Agile continued to flourish . The show developed and singers, poets, musicians were able to make their first appearances there. Many among them became stars in France - Rina Ketty, Pierre Brasseur, Clément Duhour, guitarists Alexandre Lagoya and Ida Presti, Georges Brassens, Annie Girardot, Georges Zamfir, Frédéric Lodéon, Claude Nougaro etc.

Many American and English people have also become fond of the atmosphere of the Lapin Agile. Charlie Chaplin spent several nights here, one evening playing his violin. Ernest Hemingway, Eleanor Roosevelt, Edward G. Robinson, Robert Mitchum, Dana Winters, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward, Lauren Bacall, and Henry Miller have all passed some time with us. Leontyne Price sang "Summertime" several times at the cabaret during the debut of Porgy and Bess in Paris. The great pianist Sviatoslav Richter was a regular at the Lapin Agile.

Recently, Steve Martin wrote the play "Picasso at the Lapin Agile." A big hit in the USA, it has been translated into several languages and is touring worldwide.

Today, as always, we drink the traditional cherries in brandy under shaded lamps around which the songs flow. We are not different from those who used to come and think about their misfortunes or to sing around the hearth of Frédé.

The Lapin Agile ranks as one of the most prestigious names of our artistic heritage. In the realms of painting, literature, song, poetry, music and popular songs, it conveys the image of a French and Parisian tradition appreciated by audiences throughout the world. Its large repertoire makes it the privileged ambassador of a French culture always in great demand outside our country. As the French singer Claude Nougaro once said :

"The Lapin Agile is the stronghold of tradition".

Charlie Chaplin

Edward G. Robinson