Juliette Greco, icon of French chanson and one of the last living links to the post-war Parisian Latin Quarter jazz scene, goes back on stage this week to mark her 80th birthday.

Muse of the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre and confidante of the writer Francoise Sagan, Greco has continued to sing and perform through the years, last giving a concert in Paris in 2004.

“I’m amazed to still be alive, amazed I can still walk and run and feel so terribly full of life. I don’t feel 80 at all,” she told France’s Le Parisien newspaper following her birthday last Wednesday.

For four nights from Tuesday, at Paris’ Theatre du Chatelet, Greco will perform titles from her latest album, which features covers of Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel.

During World War II Greco was briefly detained along with her mother and sister, who were both deported to Germany as Resistance members, marking her out for a lifetime of political activism.

In 1981 in Chile, she was escorted to the airport by armed guards after singing a repertoire of censored songs to an audience full of members of General Augusto Pinochet’s regime.

Copyright AFP

Subject: French news, Juliette Greco