Régine Zylberberg, the nightlife powerhouse who once ran a club empire spanning from Rio de Janeiro to Kuala Lumpur, has died.
Nicknamed “La Grande Zoa” after one of her songs, Régine often performed wearing a feather boa — though she had also been known to walk around her clubs with a live boa constrictor around her neck.
“There is not a nightclub owner in the history of France who was as famous as she,” journalist Bertrand Dicale said on France Info radio. “She was one of the first to open a place where people come to dance to fashionable records. She was also one of the very first to decide that everyone was welcome and that it would not be a clan, a family, but everyone.”
“Goodbye Régine, you made nightlife sparkle with humor and panache, and made a mark on French music with songs that have become classics,” Bachelot wrote on Twitter. . “During the war, I would go out at night. The curfew, the Germans — I wasn’t scared. I would deliver messages.”But the period ended in tragedy for Régine when her boyfriend, Claude Heyman, was deported in 1944. “He was my first love, and I think, for me, my only love — voilà,” she recalled in a matter-of-fact tone.