‘I am not afraid of death, I am happy that I live!’: legendary Charles Aznavour would have turned 100 today

Today is the birthday of the legendary French singer of Armenian ancestry, Charles Aznavour.

Charles Aznavour was born in 1922 in Paris to a family of ethnic Armenians who emigrated to France from Georgia. He was named Shahnur Vaghinag Aznavourian. His father was an operetta singer, while his mother played for the general public in the so-called “boulevard” theaters.

The children of the Aznavour family grew up to become creative personalities. From an early age, Aida showed great success in playing the piano, while Charles mastered the violin by the age of 5. Then the parents enrolled the boy in a theater school. 

In the early 1940s, Charles had a fateful encounter with the young pianist and composer Pierre Roche in one of the nightclubs in Paris. And in 1946, Edith Piaf herself noticed this duo, which was already quite popular in Europe. 

Aznavour wrote music for operettas as well. Then he began to appear in films.
Carnegie Hall opened its doors for Aznavour after his success in Shoot the Piano Player in 1960. He triumphed in the world’s most prestigious music hall, with even the critics applauding him. 

Aznavour collaborated with such celebrities as Frank Sinatra, Céline Dion, Liza Minnelli, Luciano Pavarotti, Plácido Domingo, Mireille Mathieu, Patricia Kaas, Julio Iglesias and others. Aznavour was named the best entertainer of the 20th century by CNN and Time magazine. He wrote approximately 1,300 songs, played in 60 films, and sold more than 200 million CDs.

The singer never forgot that he was Armenian. After the tragic 1988 Spitak earthquake, he organized a fundraiser to help residents of the affected regions. Later in 2008, he was granted Armenian citizenship.

“I am not afraid of death, I am happy that I live, see, hear, feel, enjoy the surrounding world…I just want to stay like this. I ask you to give me just another thousand years, I am curious to see what the third millennium will look like…”, the singer once said.

In 2018, the great Armenian died at the age of 94 in his mansion in southeastern France. A house museum named after him was opened in the Armenian capital during the life of the legend. The squares in the center of Yerevan and Gyumri are named after Aznavour. A statue of Charles Aznavour was erected in Gyumri.