Paris_ City Guide (Lonely Planet, 7th Edition) - Lonely Planet [220]
Keep an eye open for the reopening of the long-overdue Théâtre des Trois Baudets (Map; http://troisbaudets.com; 2 rue Coustou, 18e; Blanche), a mecca for chansonniers and their fans for almost 50 years till it closed in 1996.
AU LAPIN AGILE Map
01 46 06 85 87; www.au-lapin-agile.com; 22 rue des Saules, 18e; adult €24, student except Sat €17; 9pm-2am Tue-Sun; Lamarck Caulaincourt
This rustic cabaret venue was favoured by artists and intellectuals in the early 20th century and chansons are still performed here. The four-hour show starts at 9.30pm and includes singing and poetry. Some love it, others feel it’s a bit of a trap. Admission includes one drink (€6 or €7 subsequently). It’s named after Le Lapin à Gill, a mural of a rabbit jumping out of a cooking pot by caricaturist André Gill, which can still be seen on the western exterior wall.
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ÉDITH PIAF: URCHIN SPARROW
Like her American contemporary Judy Garland, Édith Piaf was not just a singer but a tragic and stoic figure whom the nation took to its heart yet never leting go.
She was born Édith Giovanna Gassion to a street acrobat and a singer in the working-class district of Belleville in 1915. Spending her childhood with an alcoholic grandmother who neglected her, and a stint with her father’s family, who ran a local brothel in Normandy, Piaf’s beginnings were far from fortunate. On tour with her father at the age of nine, by 15 she had left home to sing alone in the streets of Paris. It was her first employer, Louis Leplée, who dubbed her la môme piaf (urchin sparrow) and introduced her to the cabarets of the capital.
When Leplée was murdered in 1935 Piaf faced the streets again, but along came Raymond Asso, an ex–French Legionnaire who became her Pygmalion. He forced her to break with her pimp and hustler friends, put her in her signature black dress and was the inspiration for her first big hit, ‘Mon légionnaire’ (‘My Legionnaire’) in 1937. When she signed a contract with what is now La Java (opposite), one of the most famous Parisian music halls of the time, her career skyrocketed.
This frail woman, who sang about street life, drugs, unrequited love, violence, death and whores, seemed to embody all the miseries of the world, yet sang in a husky, powerful voice with no self-pity. Her tumultuous love life earned her the reputation as une dévoreuse d’hommes (a man-eater); in fact she launched the careers of several of her lovers, including Yves Montand and Charles Aznavour. When one of her lovers, world middleweight boxing champion Marcel Cerdan, died suddenly in a plane crash, Piaf insisted that the show go on – and fainted on stage in the middle of ‘L’Hymne à l’amour’ (‘Hymn to Love’), a song inspired by her late lover.
After suffering injuries in a car accident in 1951, Piaf began drinking heavily and became addicted to morphine. Despite her rapidly declining health she continued to take the world stage, including New York’s Carnegie Hall in 1956, and recorded some of her biggest hits such as ‘Je ne regrette rien’ (‘I regret nothing’) and ‘Milord’ (‘My Lord’). In 1962, frail and once again penniless, Piaf married a 20-year-old hairdresser called Théophanis Lamboukas (aka Théo Sarapo), recorded the duet ‘À quoi ça sert l’amour?’ (‘What Use Is Love?’) with him and left Paris for the south of France, where she died the following year. Some two million people attended her funeral in Paris, and the grave of the beloved and much missed Urchin Sparrow at Père Lachaise Cemetery is still visited and decorated by thousands of loyal fans each year. And interest in her life and work lives on: the 2007 biopic La Môme was an international success and won several major