No Regrets
The Life of Edith Piaf
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- 16,99 €
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- 16,99 €
Beschreibung des Verlags
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A FASCINATING BIOGRAPHY OF SINGING LEGEND EDITH PIAF
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'This engaging life of the diminutive French singer makes you appreciate anew what a magician she was' - Sunday Times
'Fascinating ... Burke vividly depicts the rollercoaster of Piaf's life' - Mail on Sunday
'Concise and compelling ... poised, persuasive and powerful - like the sparrow herself' - Daily Telegraph
'A clear-eyed portrait of an unflinching artist' - New Statesman
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Edith Piaf was one of the most greatly loved singers of the twentieth century. From the start of her exceptional career in the 1930s, her waif-like form and heart-wrenching voice endeared her first to the French, then to audiences around the globe.
As she moved from her youth singing in the streets to the glamour of the Paris music-halls, Piaf formed lasting friendships with such figures as Maurice Chevalier, Jean Cocteau and Marlene Dietrich; she wrote many of her own songs, aided the Resistance in the Second World War, and mentored younger singers like Yves Montand and Charles Aznavour. Yet her path to stardom was full of tragedies - the death of her daughter in infancy; the death of Marcel Cerdan, her greatest love, in a plane crash; her many illnesses, affairs and addictions, all of which nourished her passionate performances and strengthened her enduring bond with audiences.
In this mesmerising, definitive new biography Carolyn Burke gives us Piaf in her own time and place, illuminating through sympathetic readings of sources hitherto unavailable both the charm and the pathos of the 'Little Sparrow' who enchanted generations and still enthralls us today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Following her biographies of photographer Lee Miller and poet Mina Loy, Burke offers this eloquent embrace of the famed French singer-songwriter, Edith Piaf. As a child, Piaf (1915 1963) grew up in a Normandy brothel run by her grandmother, then led a vagabond life, touring as a singer with her father's acrobatic performances. A Paris street singer in her teens, she gave birth in 1933 to a daughter who lived only two years. When she brought her "velvety vibrato" and interpretations of la chanson r aliste, the tradition of gritty, slice-of-life song-stories about the downtrodden, into an elegant club in 1935, "it was as if a guttersnipe had invaded the inner sanctum where sophisticates... sat drinking champagne," yet the audience was "electrified by her voice." An overnight sensation on radio a few days later, Piaf followed with recordings, films, and concerts. Tracing her rise to international fame, Burke details her tragedies and her triumphs, her marriages and her music, and her conquest of America from Carnegie Hall to the Ed Sullivan Show. As Burke links the singer's lyrics and life in this evocative portrait, raw emotions emerge, etched with Piaf's "poignant mix of vulnerability and defiance."
