Now that she has been relieved of the burden of being France’s first lady, Carla Bruni is set to make a return to music and is planning a series of concerts and a new album to be released this autumn.

Although she has rarely been out of the spotlight in the last four years, the former supermodel put her pop career on hold after her whirlwind romance with Nicolas Sarkozy in 2008 and last year gave birth to a daughter Giulia, who is now seven months old.

Now, it seems, she is planning a comeback. "Carla did not put her career on hold during the five-year term of Nicolas Sarkozy. She continued to compose at her own pace," her spokesman Veronique Rampazzo has revealed. She told Le Parisien that while Bruni had not performed or recorded for "practical reasons" since 2008, she was now planning a series of shows and a new album.

Bruni will hope that her new record, which should be out in time for Christmas, recaptures the popularity of her debut, Quelqu'un m'a dit (Somebody Told Me), in 2004, which sold 2 million copies and won awards. Her subsequent efforts, 'No Promises' and 'Comme si de rien n'était' (As If Nothing Had Happened), were less well received.

She will also have to fight for attention with the new first lady, Valerie Trierweiler, who has vowed to carry on working as a journalist even though her "companion", Francois Hollande, has ousted Sarkozy. It will be interesting to see which of the two women exerts more of a fascination on the French public.

The decision to resume her musical career might have been prompted by other concerns, suggests The Daily Telegraph, such as the breadwinning powers of her husband. "Sarkozy is facing an uncertain future," says the paper. "His poor English means he is unlikely to be able to make money on the lucrative US lecture circuit, and he has ruled out any return to politics."

The Daily Mail hints that the former president may even decide to become a house husband. "Sarkozy is unlikely to return to his first career as a lawyer, either, but thanks to his Italian-born wife’s ￡20 million-plus personal fortune he does not need to work again," the paper says. "What it certain is that he will have a lot more time to spend with the couple's seven month old baby daughter, Giulia."

(Read by Nelly Min. Nelly Min is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)