Spanish
The Friends of Édith Piaf association is calling for a museum for the French "immense artist", who was born 110 years ago in Paris, and who was a woman from whom "younger generations could be inspired", the president of the association emphasized to EFE.
"She was someone extremely combative and passionate, despite having had romantic disappointments and a very difficult childhood throughout her life (...) she truly is one of the great female figures who fought and who, despite being women, managed to prevail," Imbert declared.
For years, the association chaired by Imbert has been trying to open that museum dedicated to her memory "either in Grasse" (southeast), where the singer died in 1963 and negotiations with the city council "seem to be going well", "or in Paris", where she was born in 1915, although she said "not to close any doors".
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The city of Paris recognized Piaf's cultural legacy with a plaque at the place of her birth, at street level, and a square named after her, next to the hospital where she was actually born, and even with a statue in the same place. Inaugurated officially on October 11, 2003 (at the same time as the square), on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the artist's death, the bronze statue is the work of the sculptor Lisberth Delisle, and shows Piaf with her iconic great expressiveness: arms raised to the sky and head tilted back while singing. Among her most listened to songs are titles such as "La Vie en Rose", "Non, je ne regrette rien", "La foule", "Padam Padam" or "Sous le ciel de Paris", an ode to the French capital, of which she quickly became a true reference and a symbol of its romanticism. The fascination with her figure is also compounded by multiple legendary stories that have contributed to idealizing her, such as the fact that she was born in a doorway, which, Imbert assures, "is a myth" - although she lived on the street "for some time"-, or that her corpse was transported from Grasse to Paris to make people believe that she had died in the capital. "They said it was unthinkable that Édith Piaf would die anywhere other than Paris, so they placed her on a stretcher when she had already passed away and put an IV in her arm, so that if the police stopped them on the way they could say that she had just died, and they took her to Paris during the night. The next day they declared her death," narrated the president of the association. Piaf died at the age of 47 from an aneurysm. Her remains rest in the Père-Lachaise cemetery in Paris, the most visited in the world, in a tomb in which her father and her second husband are also buried, and where she shares space with some of the most recognizable names in the recent history of France.
