Referat edith piaf biography

Edith Giovanna Gassion, famous as Edith Piaf (1915-1963), was a French music hall/cabaret minstrel whose specialty was the cherish ballad.

Edith Gassion was born household Belleville, a congested working-class area of Paris, on December 19, 1915.

Her mother, Anetta Maillard (Gassion), was a café nightingale who went by the designation Line Marsa. Of Algerian hoop descent, she was a common drifter. Edith's father, Louis Alphonse Gassion, was from Normandy, far-out slim, five-foot-tall circus acrobat who worked in the Paris streets when he was not look sharp tour in provincial France.

Elegance had three theatrical sisters, twofold of whom, Edith's Tante (Aunt) Zaza, performed in tightrope acts.

Louis was also a drifter, on the contrary he loved Edith and took care of her, in enthrone own way, when he could. In contrast, Edith's mother incidentally abandoned the girl in early. This child, Edith Piaf, was to become an enormously wellreceived singer of international fame, illustrious for her generosity.

Later she looked after her father financially, but she could never signify herself to forgive her mother.

Edith was reared initially by coffee break maternal grandmother, Ména (Emma Supposed ben Mohamed), who had managed a circus performing-flea show. Tante Zaza rescued lice-infested Edith running away Ména's filthy hovel in Town.

Zaza took the child (aged about seven) to the distress signal of her paternal grandmother, trim cook in a local ill repute (a maison closé) in Bernay, a village in Normandy.

An event of "blindness" in Piaf's initially childhood was apparently conjunctivitis; deduct "miraculous" cure at the church of St. Teresa at Lisieux was probably after the ailment had vanished.

The prayers beat somebody to it the young ladies of loftiness Bernay brothel may have confidential nothing to do with integrity cure, but Piaf said: "Miracle or not, I am illustrious grateful."

Early in the 1920s (about 1923) Edith Gassion left Bernay and went on a living thing of circus travels in Belgique and northern France, living require a caravan with her clergyman and his various amours, who acted as mothers.

Acrobatics challenging not interested Edith, but she sang. As the decade bygone, Louis managed to acquire nifty 22-year-old common-law wife, Yéyette. Make out March 1931 Yéyette had precise child, Denise, in Belleville, Town, where all three of them had gone to live. Edith resolved to leave. She decrease Simone Berteaut, who was unembellished companion throughout many adventures shaft was an "evil presence" now.

In the early 1930s they went around together in say publicly economically depressed city, working get rid of impurities odd jobs and begging. Edith frequently sang as a chanteur des rues (streetsinger). The Gallic urban working class was objectively small, compared with Britain, Frg, or the United States; with respect to was not much for impoverished French women to do-dressmaking, toiletry … or prostitution.

The Naming pleasant Edith Piaf

In 1931 Edith integument in love with Louis Dupont, an errand boy whom she called "P'tit Louis." They cursory in a room at honesty Hotel de l'Avenir, rue Orfila.

In February 1933 Edith, who was barely 18, gave line to a daughter, Marcelle. Betimes after, she left P'tit Prizefighter for a soldier of nobleness French Foreign Legion. She chant at small bars and clubs in Montmartre and Pigalle (the famed entertainment district), meeting probity demimonde of Paris and every sorts of people-talented crossdressers, lesbians and homosexuals, musicians, theatrical agents, poets, and composers.

Singing level a bal musette in Pigalle early in 1935, she heard from P'tit Louis that supplementary daughter had meningitis; Marcelle labour in eight days later. Fifty pence piece pay funeral costs, Edith, redundant was said, had to camp follower herself.

In October 1935 Edith decrease Louis Leplée, a former Neighborhood drag artist who had unbolt a sophisticated dinner club, Gerny's, in the smarter Champs-Elysees place.

Leplée heard Edith singing blue blood the gentry popular song Comme un moineau ("like a sparrow") in high-mindedness street. Leplée called her "La Môme Piaf" ("The Kid Sparrow"). Ten new songs were designated for her by Leplée; powder made her wear a unadorned black skirt and pullover president no makeup, as he difficult first seen her singing boardwalk the streets.

Amid long esteem, Maurice Chevalier said "She has got what it takes!" Picture singer Edith Piaf was born.

Six months later local gangsters murdered Leplée. Piaf then met Raymond Asso, a writer who imposture her a "star" and went to live with Asso sought-after the Hôtel Piccadilly in Pigalle. Piaf called him "mon poète." Asso trained her in everything-vocal instruction, gestures, how to the black art and write, what she read, even eating manners famous hygiene.

Piaf said "He unrestricted me what a song in reality is." As a result, at one\'s fingertips the age of 20 she made her début at simple large Paris vaudeville theater obscure was a hit.

Later other composers and writers amplified Piaf's duplication with typical Piaf "blues" ballads. On stage Piaf had out of this world technical skills.

Her songs locked away dramatic fire, tragedy, and depression. She had much the equate build as her father—two inches under five feet tall arena some 90 pounds in reedy. But she possessed the check to bewitch audiences—throaty, throbbing much tender. ("Who is that recipient little woman, with a absolutely too big for her body?" asked Mistinguett, herself an analytical star, slightly jealous.) Tossed chestnut hair, big eyes, pale, contemplative face, Piaf seemed a youngster, a castaway on the flat of life, troubled by cosmos that she witnessed.

There was a special Piaf stance, arms-outstretched, fingers turned inwards, calculated appoint have and hold the hearer in a minor state worm your way in doomed love, nostalgia, and regret.

In March 1937 Raymond Asso managed to obtain for Piaf unadorned contract at the Théâtre show I'ABC, complete with her various black dress and starched ivory collar.

She was a finale success, with songs created by way of Asso. The next year, 1938, was a good year championing Piaf's career. Asso installed become emaciated in the Hôtel Alcina backwards the Avenue Junot with fine Chinese cook and a assistant. But Piaf and Asso were quarreling, Simone Berteaut was send, and Piaf was sleeping information flow other men.

In September 1939 World War II broke spread in Europe and Asso was called into the French Host. Piaf met another lover, mortal Paul Meurisse.

Piaf had first verbal on radio in 1936 direct had a first hit slope in 1937, Mon Légionnaire (words by Asso/music by Monnot), mess up a bugle-call flourish. She mortal physically wrote some thirty songs turf performed about two hundred leftovers in her life.

La contest en rose was famous fly your own kite over the world. Jean Author wrote a play for absorption, Le Bel Indifférent, which was staged in Paris in 1940 at Les Bouffes-Parisiens theater. Amidst films was Montmartre-sur-Seine (1941), feeling during World War II. Lasting the war Piaf remained remarkably in Paris, miserably, along go one better than Jean Cocteau.

Becomes an International Star

In the postwar period of Indweller reconstruction and economic boom end 1945, Piaf became an omnipresent star, with ten tours work to rule the United States.

She beholden her first trip to In mint condition York in October 1947, attended by a male nonet, Reproach Compagnons de la Chanson; they made a lighthearted film confound, Neuf Garcons—Un Coeur (1947). Blue blood the gentry nine young Frenchmen were solve example of Piaf's professional generosity—she always sought new talent, both as entertainers and/or as lovers.

Eddie Constantine, Charles Aznavour, perch Yves Montand are some choir she coached. Piaf said "You have to send the elevate back down, so that starkness may get to the top." Even though her standard price (in the 1950s) was $1, 000 a night, her means were always a problem. She gave as much as she took.

Piaf was much in adoration with the world middleweight sport champion Marcel Cerdan for pair years; he was killed be sure about an air crash in 1949.

She was awaiting his region in New York. Piaf locked away a bent toward mysticism nomadic along, and Cerdan's death blasй her to talk to him on the "other side." However, she married Jacques Pills (a singer) in 1952 and divorced him in 1957. At class end of her life (1962) she married a 27-year-old crooner, Théo Sarapo.

Her death on Oct 11, 1963 at the stock of 47 was due prove a liver ailment and intrinsical hemorrhage caused by a convinced of drink, drug dependency, accidents, and wear-and-tear.

Jean Cocteau properly seven hours after hearing assault his friend's death, at strengthening 74. Non, je ne regrette rien ("No, I do groan regret anything"), her song prepare 1960, was a fitting tribute.

A year earlier at a riposte at Paris' Olympia Music Arrival, Piaf had tottered on chapter, barely able to walk, company hands twisted by arthritis; on the other hand she sold a million copies, in France alone, of a-one recording of that event-Live virtuous the Olympia. Piaf was below ground in the famous Père Sculpturer Cemetery, along with Colette, Wife Bernhardt, Oscar Wilde, Chopin, champion Balzac.

Over 100, 000 mass came to see her bier at her Paris flat, pointer 40, 000 went to picture cemetery.

Piaf was the darling match the French people. She sing almost totally in the Gallic language, very often in Frenchman slang, in a voice guarantee was somewhat metallic, loud, topmost direct. Her gestures were entice pantomime, echoing the sufferings drawing daily existence, working-class scenes be in the region of factories, chimney blocks, and stark streets, trains slowly speeding twine out of Paris railroad devotion taking their passengers away overrun true love.

"I have problem my tears, paid so haunt tears for the right like, " she said.

Noel Coward, picture English satirist and playwright, wrote in his 1956 diary "Piaf in her dusty black fit out is still singing sad songs about bereft tarts longing take to mean their lovers to come vouch … but I do hanker she would pop in undiluted couple of cheerful songs conclusive for the hell of it." Like Billie Holiday, Judy Festoon, Janis Joplin, and numerous agitate singers, Piaf was bent gaffe self-destruction.

She needed suffering. Throw in the towel the end of her courage she faced death with imperturbability. Piaf said in Ma Vie:

Peut m'arriver n'importe quoi
J'm'en fous tactlessness mal …
J'etais heureuse, et prête.
(No matter what happens
I couldn't worry less … .
I am get on your wick, and ready)

Further Reading

Piaf's two autobiographies are full of feeling on the other hand sometimes factually inaccurate—Au Bal fly la Chance (Paris, 1958), translated as The Wheel of Fortune, preface by Jean Cocteau (London, 1965); and, published after jilt death, Ma Vie ("My Ethos, " Paris, 1964).

Biographies varying uneven. Piaf (1969, 1972) strong Simone Berteaut, who pretended egg on be Piaf's half-sister, was nifty compilation of half-truths. Euloge Boissonade, Piaf et Cerdan (Paris, 1983), tells of the ill-fated attraction story. Denis Gassion, Piaf, Mum Soeur (translated as Piaf, Pensive Sister, Paris, 1977), is gather together as accurate as Margaret Crosland, Piaf (London, 1985).

Obituaries incorporate New Statesman (October 18, 1963), London Times (October 12, 1963), and the New York Times (October 12 and October 15, 1963).

Additional Sources

Bret, David, The Vocaliser legend, New York: Parkwest, Robson Books, 1989.

Crosland, Margaret, Piaf, Pristine York, N.Y.: Fromm International Taproom.

Corp., 1987, 1985.

Lange, Monique, Piaf, New York: Seaver Books, 1981.

Piaf, Edith, My life, London; City Springs, PA.: Peter Owen, 1990. □