Շառլ Ազնավուր · the voice of France, the pride of Armenia
1 Oct 2018 Eight years 1 Oct 2026
He wrote a thousand songs, made ninety-one albums and acted in eighty
films. Eight years this October since the last encore — this page walks his life year by
year, and sends you to YouTube for the songs themselves.
Jean Cocteau, who cast him in Le Testament d’Orphée, 1960
Charles Aznavour was born in Paris in 1924 to Armenian parents, and died at
home in the south of France in 2018. In between he sang in nine languages, wrote more than a
thousand songs, broke a taboo nobody had asked him to break, and spent the last thirty years
of his life rebuilding a country he had not lived in since childhood.
1,000+songs written
91studio albums
80+films
180M+records sold
He stood 1.60 m tall, sang with a tenor voice he was told was too slight,
and was still adding languages to it at eighty.
36 rue Monsieur-le-Prince · the plaque · Montmartre above it
Chapter one · 1924
A boy called Shahnour
He was born on 22 May 1924 at the clinic Tarnier, 89 rue d’Assas,
Saint-Germain-des-Prés. His father, Misha, came from Akhaltsikhe in present-day Georgia; his
mother, Knar, from Adapazarı in present-day Turkey. He was named Shahnour Vaghinag
Aznavourian. An older sister, Aida, had been born in January 1923 in Thessaloniki.
The family lived at 36 rue Monsieur-le-Prince and ran a small Armenian
restaurant in the rue de la Huchette — a street of theatres and nightclubs — until the
Depression closed it. A family legend claimed his grandfather had cooked for the last
Tsar. Aznavour joked that the Czar used to eat there “every 150 years.”
At nine he left school and took the stage name Aznavour, Armenian for
nobleman. He danced in nightclubs, went back to school at fifteen, and in 1944 formed a
partnership with actor Pierre Roche. They wrote their first song, J’ai Bu, and took
it across the Atlantic to Canada.
22 May 1924Paris 6ᵉ, at the clinic Tarnier
1924A restaurant in the rue de la Huchette
Age 9Leaves school; takes the name Aznavour
1923Aida, born in Thessaloniki
1944Partners with Pierre Roche; writes “J’ai Bu”
Édith Piaf · Studio Harcourt, 1950
Chapter two · the godmother
Piaf hears him sing
Early on he was booked to open for Édith Piaf. She told him to make singing
his career rather than dancing, and helped him develop the voice that reviewers had been
assured was too slight. He became her secretary and her driver, and toured France and
America with her.
“T’es un génie, mais t’es con ! ”
“You are a genius, but you are an idiot.” — Édith Piaf, Le Point, 6 October 2018
It was her instruction to stop under-using himself. He never forgot it, wrote
Plus bleu que le bleu de tes yeux for her, and said later that she pushed him towards
the microphone, corrected his phrasing, and insisted he sing his own words.
Chapter three · 1924 — 2018
A life, year by year
Drag, or use ← →, to move along
I · Le jeune homme
1924
Born on the Left Bank
22 May, the rue d’Assas. Armenian parents, a restaurant in the rue de la Huchette, and a
grandfather who may have cooked for the last Tsar.
1933
He takes a stage name
At nine he leaves school, takes the name Aznavour — nobleman, in Armenian — and
never stops for the critics who write him off.
1941
Seventeen
Dancing in the Paris cabarets while the city was being bombed. He is called to the
shelters; he sings instead.
1955
Whistled off at the Olympia
Summer, in the temple of French song. Part of the audience whistles him off. The press
is crueler. He comes back anyway, every year, for thirty of them.
The Olympia, photographed today
II · The voice arrives
1960
“En haut de l’affiche”
12 December. The press finally admits him dans la cour des grands. The same year
Truffaut casts him as a café pianist in Tirez sur le pianiste.
1961
Arms out, orchestra behind
The sound he had been building since the dance halls of the 1940s, arriving all at
once. Grand Gala du Disque, Scheveningen; the international years begin.
1961
Signing records in Amsterdam
A Dutch leaflet advertising a record with two vocals. He is thirty-seven and
already a headline in three languages.
1961
Backstage, in a borrowed jacket
The unglamorous other half of a stage career: a room after the show, a woman in a
gingham blouse, a cigarette, and the long drive to the next town.
1965
“La Bohème”
Music by Aznavour, words by Jacques Plante, for the operetta Monsieur Carnaval. No. 1
in France — and, at almost every concert for the rest of his life, the encore.
1970s
Duets around the world
Tehran to Tokyo. He sings with everyone — including the Iranian icon Googoosh — and becomes
the most recognisable French voice on the planet.
1970s
A hotel table, the Netherlands
Two cameras on the cloth, a plate of pastries and no interview. Most of his life was spent
in rooms exactly like this one.
1975
“Ils sont tombés”
Released 24 April: his song for the Armenians of 1915. They fell, prudently, without a
sound. He had been waiting his whole life to say it.
1976
Schiphol, again
Luggage, a schedule, a jet lag. By now he was touring three continents a year and calling
none of it touring.
III · The world citizen
1980
Guest of honour
The great European television stages, and the Edison awards in the Netherlands — his
third. He had stopped being a guest in his own country years ago.
1988
With Pierre Delanoë
The man who wrote a thousand of his words. The same winter, an earthquake flattened
northern Armenia.
1988
Spitak, and “Pour toi Arménie”
Thousands dead in an Armenian winter. He founds the charity Aznavour for Armenia; the
following year France sings his fundraising single for eighteen straight weeks.
1990s
The face at seventy
The photographer got closer every decade. By now the voice was a dry, amused instrument,
and the songs were longer, and sadder, and better.
IV · National hero
2005
UNESCO Ambassador
Ambassador and Permanent Delegate of Armenia to the UN in Geneva, a post he held until
his last day. He sang more or less continuously across all of it.
2010
The writer at eighty-six
Signing books. A thousand songs, and the man who had written a third of them.
2011
A museum in Yerevan
Opened in the house where he stayed during the 1988 earthquake relief. The country he had
only ever visited now keeps him.
2014
Ninety, in Yerevan
Presidents Sargsyan and Hollande in the room, and a concert that ran past midnight. His
last global tour began that year.
2016
Aurora Prize
For Awakening Humanity. He accepted it, at ninety-two, in the city his father’s family
had left sixty years before.
2017
Stars, and the Wallenberg Award
The 2,618th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, aged 93. Then the Raoul Wallenberg Award,
with his sister Aida, for the family that hid people from the Nazis.
1 Oct 2018
The voice falls silent
Found at home in Mouriès, in the south of France, of cardiorespiratory arrest. Six months
earlier a fall had broken his arm. Three days before the end was his last television
appearance.
5 Oct 2018
France says goodbye
A state funeral at Les Invalides. Macron: “he made our life sweeter, our tears less
bitter.” The coffin left to Emmenez-moi.
Chapter four · the songs
The songs that outlived him
He wrote more than a thousand in nine languages, and the ones below are
the ones France has never let go of. Each title opens on YouTube.
His piano teacher Jack-Henri Soutter’s instrument, kept in a glass case
Chapter five · the instrument
Anatomy of a voice
A tenor shaded with the colour of a baritone, wrapped in a vibrato you could
recognise in two notes. It was small — like him, 1.60 m — and that was its power. Never a
trumpet, always a confidence. Critics called him a French pop deity; the rest of the world
called him the French Sinatra, a label he bore with a shrug and a joke.
He never stopped adding languages to the instrument: chansons in French,
ballads in English, romances in Italian, flamenco-adjacent Spanish, German, Russian — and
Armenian, the language of his parents, which he saved some of his most intimate recordings
for.
Français · English · Italiano · Español · Deutsch · Русский · Հայերեն · Napoletano · Kabyle
91studio albums
≈60gold & platinum discs
1963live at Carnegie Hall
Bob Dylan saw him at Carnegie Hall in the sixties
and never forgot it: “he just blew my brains out.”
Chapter six · 1972
He sang what others wouldn’t
When he asked to record Comme ils disent — written from the point of
view of a man loving another man — he was warned it would be the end of him. In 1972, France
had never heard anything like it on the radio.
He released it anyway. It became one of his signature records, a quiet
landmark of French pop: empathy as a hit single. “I wanted to break every taboo,” he
said later. Chanson never quite whispered about that taboo again.
A face character actors envied: the New Wave’s small-statured regular, the
arthouse villain, the comic uncle — and a Best Actor prize before he was thirty-five.
1959
La Tête contre les murs
dir. Georges Franju — Best Actor, French Cinema Academy
1960
Le Testament d’Orphée
dir. Jean Cocteau — the poet casts him, then jokes about him for years
1960
Tirez sur le pianiste
dir. François Truffaut — as Édouard Saroyan, café pianist
1964
Le Corniaud
dir. Gérard Oury — the great commercial comedy
1974
And Then There Were None
the acclaimed Agatha Christie adaptation
1979
The Tin Drum
dir. Volker Schlöndorff — an Oscar winner for Best Foreign Language Film
1982
Les Fantômes du chapelier
dir. Claude Chabrol
2002
Ararat
dir. Atom Egoyan — reprising his Pianiste persona, on the same subject
A private sitting room, 1961 — a bust of Haydn on the shelf behind him
Chapter eight · home
Three marriages, six children
He married three times: Micheline Rugel in 1946, Evelyn Plessis in 1954, and
in 1966 the Swedish model Ulla Thorsell, who became his widow. Five children came out of
those marriages — Seda from the first, and Patrick, Katia, Mischa and Nicolas from the
third.
A sixth was born out of wedlock to the cabaret dancer Arlette Bordais on
16 July 1951, and named Patrick. Aznavour acknowledged him nine years later; Evelyn helped
raise the boy. Patrick died in May 1976, aged twenty-five — a grief he rarely discussed
afterwards.
1946Marries Micheline Rugel
1954Marries Evelyn Plessis
1966Marries Ulla Thorsell
1976Patrick’s death, aged 25
1.60 mHeight, and sixty years of jokes about it
Chapter nine
“Français et Arménien”
“I am French and Armenian — the two are inseparable, like milk and coffee.”
Hollywood, 24 August 2017, on receiving his Walk of Fame star
1988
Spitak earthquake
Thousands die in the Armenian winter. He creates the charity Aznavour for Armenia and spends the next thirty years rebuilding.
1989
Eighteen weeks at No. 1
Pour toi Arménie, written with Georges Garvarentz and sung by France’s biggest stars, tops the charts for four and a half months.
1992
Armenia Fund
On the board of trustees, helping channel over $150 million in aid and infrastructure to Armenia.
2004
National Hero
Armenia’s highest award — four years before citizenship, and long before the squares that carry his name.
2008
Citizenship
Granted 26 December. “A hero of the Armenian people,” said President Sargsyan.
2009–18
Ambassador
Armenia’s ambassador to Switzerland and to the UN in Geneva, serving until the day he died.
Chapter ten · the quiet hero
Lives hidden in a Paris flat
During the Occupation, the Aznavours — connected to the Missak Manouchian
resistance group — sheltered Jews, Armenians and others at their own address, risking
everything for it. Charles and his sister Aida carried out rescue work of their own.
In 2017, Israel’s president formally recognised the family’s courage, and
Charles and Aida received the Raoul Wallenberg Award. Their names are together on the
plaque at 22 rue de Navarin, in the ninth arrondissement.
“The Aznavours offered shelter
to Jews and others at their own Paris flat, risking their own lives.”
International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation, 2017
Chapter eleven · what remains
The places that carry his name
Squares, statues and gardens in two countries — and a museum in the house
where he stayed after the earthquake.
Chapter twelve · portraits
A face for every decade
Drag along, then click any photograph to enlarge it.
Chapter thirteen
Ribbons & laurels
Decorations
1986 · 2000National Order of Merit — Officer, then Commandeur
1959Best Actor, French Cinema Academy — La Tête contre les murs
1963 · 71 · 80Three Edison Awards, Netherlands
1971Golden Lion, honorary — Venice Film Festival
1995UNESCO Ambassador & Permanent Delegate of Armenia
1996Songwriters Hall of Fame
1997Victoire de la Musique, male artist of the year · honorary César
2009MIDEM Lifetime Achievement · honorary doctorate, Université de Montréal
2017Hollywood Walk of Fame, star 2,618, aged 93 · Raoul Wallenberg Award
Between 1974 and 2016 he collected around sixty gold and platinum records.
His record company counts total sales of over 180 million units.
5 October 2018 · Les Invalides, Paris
France says goodbye
A state funeral under the golden dome. President
Macron delivered the eulogy; prime ministers and presidents filled the hall — and from
Armenia, President Sargsyan. The coffin left to Emmenez-moi.
“For millions of people, a balm, a remedy, a comfort… For so many decades, he has made our
life sweeter, our tears less bitter.”
Emmanuel Macron, eulogy at the Invalides, 5 October 2018
Eight years since the last encore. The voice is gone; the songs are
everywhere — in taxis in Paris, in courtyards in Yerevan, in the credits of Notting Hill,
and in the mouth of anyone who has ever been twenty and starving and happy.
