France pays national homage to Aznavour
Paris: France paid a moving national homage on Friday to the late singer Charles Aznavour, the little man with the very big life. With honours that are usually reserved for national heroes, one of the greatest songwriters of the 20th century was lauded as a cultural giant by the leaders of his two homelands — France and Armenia — at a ceremony in Paris.
Aznavour — who was still touring at 94 — died in his bath on Monday just days after he declared that he would like to breathe his last on stage.
He had concerts planned in both Brussels and his hometown of Paris over the next month.
The ceremony at the Invalides began with Aznavour's coffin, draped in the French tricolour flag, being carried into the cobbled courtyard to the haunting Armenian lament, Dle Yaman, played on a traditional dudek flute. French President Emmanuel Macron said Aznavour knew suffering and “carried the scar of the genocide of his people” in his heart. That was why “for millions his songs were a balm, a comfort and a cure,” he said. Macron praised the singer's “loyalty to his roots", throwing himself into helping Armenia recover from a devastating earthquake in 1988 and acting as its ambassador to the UN. Some heroes become French by spilling their blood. This son of Greek and Armenian immigrants, who never went to secondary school, knew instinctively that our most sacred sanctuary was the French language,” and used it like the poet he was, the president added. Earlier both the Armenian and French national anthems had echoed around the 17thcentury Invalides complex which houses Napoleon's tomb.
Fans lined the streets outside as his family, led by his widow Swedishborn Ulla Thorsel, took their places at the ceremony. Born Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian in Paris in 1924 to parents who had fled the massacres of Armenians in what is now Turkey.