Legendary French singer Aznavour dies at 94

PARIS: The legendary French singer Charles Aznavour -- who said last week he wanted to breathe his last on stage -- has died aged 94, his spokeswoman told AFP Monday.

The songwriter, who had just returned from a concert tour of Japan, passed away at his home in Alpilles in southeastern France.

The veteran French actor Alain Delon said his old friend had “died in his sleep”.

“I loved that man. I am in bits,” he told AFP.

Aznavour had to cancel several shows after breaking his arm in a fall earlier this year.

But as late as Friday the diminutive singer told French television that though his Swedish-born wife wanted him to stop, he would happily die on stage.

“I always go forwards. I have no reverse gear,” he said.

“All I can do is live, and I live on stage. I am happy up there.”

The singer had planned to go back on tour later this month, starting with a concert in Brussels on Oct 26 and his hometown Paris a fortnight later.

His doctor Jean Abitbol said his voice had “practically never aged. He knew how to look after it and lived a rigorously healthy life, which was rare for his time.

“He wanted to die on stage like (the playwright) Moliere, and that is kind of what he did,” he told French TV.

French President Emmanuel Macron led the tributes, praising his “unique brilliance”.

“Proudly French, viscerally attached to his Armenian roots... Charles Aznavour accompanied three generations through their joys and pains,” he said.

Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan called him “a national hero”.

British star Sting -- who recorded “Love is New Everyday” in 2009 with the man who he said “had inspired me for so many years” -- told AFP that Aznavour “may be gone but what he leaves is eternal”.

Multilingual and a tireless traveller, Aznavour pioneered a new, highly emotional way of performing, turning every song into “a one-act play”.

In the English- speaking world he was often dubbed France’s Frank Sinatra.

But unlike the American crooner, he wrote his own songs, often breaking taboos about marriage, homosexuality and men talking about their emotions.

He was born Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian in Paris on May 22, 1924, to parents who had fled the massacres in their homeland as the Ottoman empire collapsed.

Aznavour went on to sell more than 180 million records in a career spanning eight decades.

Ironically, his favourite song was one of the few in his repertoire he didn’t write himself, ‘La Boheme’.

His family were heroes of the resistance against the Nazi occupation of France during World War II, regularly risking death to hide Jews and Communist partisans in their Paris apartment.

He began performing in their little restaurant with his sister when he was a child.

Aznavour got his big break after the war when he opened for the then rising French star Edith Piaf.

She took him to America as her manager and songwriter while he worked on his voice.

The two lived and drank together but Aznavour said they were never lovers.

“We loved each other but it was not sexual. She wasn’t my type. It’s very important to have a type,” he said.

Aznavour had his first number one hit in 1956 with “Sur Ma Vie” ( In My Life). That was followed by one of his biggest hits, “Je M’voyais Deja” ( It Will Be My Day).