Edith Piaf
Premier among chanson singers of the twentieth century is Edith Piaf (1915–1963), affectionately known as “The Little Sparrow.” Piaf’s life has been the subject of several biographies and was most recently depicted in the multiple-award-winning movie La Vie en Rose (A Life in Pink), in 2007. She spent much of her life as a performer, initially as a street singer, before finding success as a cabaret performer in the mid-1930s. Her fame spread throughout France during the 1940s, and internationally after World War II, when she toured the United States and Europe. She appeared in several films during the late 1940s and 1950s and recorded hundreds of songs in French as well as in English until the year of her death, in 1963. She is widely regarded as France’s greatest popular singer.