Saga named Aznavour

The great French singer, poet and actor passed away

At such a respectable age, as a rule, they do not act: ninety -four! But Charles Aznavour could not live differently and until the last breath remained a man of pop.

“I am not able to remain idle: every day I get up at five o’clock and spin like a squirrel in a wheel,” Monsieur Aznavour told me during one of our interviews. - Once I had a psychoanalyst who said that subconsciously and passionately I wish to remain young. I don’t feel at all that I am the ninth dozen. Previously, I believed that the best age for men is forty years. Now I think - sixty. At this age, you can already turn back and is ready to comprehend true wisdom. However, is it? "

Probably there. In Aznavour, she was expressed in the ability to find positive in the most seemingly hopeless situations. Charles believed that this quality is purely Armenian: "After all, our people suffered so many suffering and still retained the joy of life." He himself went through so many tests that they would be enough for dozens of biographies.

“For me, every new year has been equal to a big victory,” Charles told me. - I did so many all kinds of stupid things in my youth, which now I can quite afford to be wise. I have made too long and difficult for glory. He began to speak very hard, to the public, brought up in the post -war years in the recalling aesthetics of the opera handsome people, neither my ordinary appearance nor my slightly deaf voice did not like. I remember, at one of my first concerts, as soon as I sang, the viewer in the front row loudly, defiantly turned to my wife: “I have never heard more nonsense than this goat.” I finished it to the end, and then ran away to the curtains and burst into tears ...

When I first performed in Olympia, the main and most prestigious concert hall of Paris, the most sophisticated and saturated audience gathered in the stalls: journalists, producers, deputies, all kinds of celebrities. I sing one song, the second, the third ... There is silence in the hall. I finish the performance and, completely depressed, I am leaving for the curtains. "All! - I say impresario. “From tomorrow I will go to work in the greenhouse shop ...” And the producer pulls me by the sleeve back on the stage: “This is a triumph, Charles!” It turns out that the audience broke out with applause and has been clapping standing for several minutes, demands my appearance on the stage. ”

About his life of a biographical film (American Bayopica) has not yet been shot. It seems to me, this is only a matter of time. After all, the fate of Aznavour is a whole saga. Here is the parental house of the Armenian refugees (Misha Aznavuryan was from Tbilisi, and Knar Baghdasaryan from Turkey), in which fugitive Soviet prisoners of war were hidden from the Nazis; and friendship with the Great Edith Piaf, who became his Pygmalion in a skirt; and three marriages; And numerous children, many of whom went to good musicians ... And, of course, one and a half thousand songs written with his participation (Aznavour is a poet, first of all), such a number of different discs that they could easily be paved all the way from Paris to the Moon ... not to mention six dozen films in which Charles played magnificent roles.

“In recent years, I have been speaking less: I moved from the locomotive to Fiakr,” Charles Aznavour told me. - But I am a man of performance, I am not used to rest. If I do not sing, then I play the cinema. If I do not speak on television, then I compose operetta. So, in 1972, I rode skiing and crashed heavily. For several months I had to lie motionless. And he took advantage of this, so that together with my “Bajanach” ( in Armenian: my sister’s husband. - K.P. ) Write the composer Georges Garvaren to write an operetta. We called her in Russian: "Dushka."

Being an Armenian by blood, Aznavour never called himself such, only - "a Frenchman of Armenian origin." Why? Probably, the upbringing received on Parisian bridges was affected. There, in the quarter of Saint-Germain, children of various peoples lived with one family: French and Jews, Poles and Russians, Armenians and Spaniards ...

“Armenian roots woke up in me after an earthquake in Spitak,” Charles admitted to me. - Then I created the Aznavour for Armenia charity foundation and recorded the song “For you, Armenia”, according to which the wonderful director Henri Verneeus, also by an Armenian by origin, was shot a video with the participation of ninety singers and artists! The plate made simultaneously with the clip dispersed a million copies. All of us, members of the Armenian diaspora in France, passionately wanted to help our long -suffering people. I won’t spread about the same as the funds collected later ... I don’t want to ... ”

Recognized by the representative international jury, the “singer of the century”, Aznavour has already turned into a kind of myth, a musical and poetic monument during his lifetime. However, the real monument in his honor has already been placed - of course, in Armenia, in the city of Gyumri. In response to my question, how Monsieur Charles relates to this for his life immortalion, Aznavour broke into a smile:

“I will not hide, I am pleased. One thing is only a little overshadowing this holiday of life: as soon as I imagine what fertility the temperamental Caucasian pigeons arrange on my gray -haired head, it becomes scared. ”

Kirill Privalov - especially for "New"