Sylvie Vartan bids farewell to the stage with a series of final concerts. On this occasion, “Libération” painted his portrait. The singer opened up about the difficult times at the start of her life.
Sylvie Vartan has decided to leave the stage while she is still in good shape. At 80, Johnny Hallyday’s ex-wife has lived several lives. This is certainly why the newspaper Release decided to dedicate a portrait in its pages to the star of the yéyés era. David Hallyday’s mother confided intimate details about her early childhood which was particularly harsh.
Sylvie Vartan: her first years in Paris with 4 “in one and the same room”
Sylvie Vartan arrived in France at the age of 8 with her parents who were fleeing Bulgaria under the yoke of Stalin. “I will never forget. We lived for four years in one and the same room which was like this [un espace de 25 m², ndlr], a little smaller, with two large beds, a table, two storage rooms like that in a corner”, she confided in Release.
When the star – who now lives between her house in Paris and her villa in Los Angeles – had to hastily leave her native Bulgaria, it was heartbreaking to separate from her grandfather whom she loved so much. “Childhood is gone, she stayed with him on the platform“, she declared in the book Dear grandparents, by Nathalie Lévy.
Sylvie Vartan and her painful memories of Bulgaria: “It was abominable”
Sylvie Vartan lived until the age of 8 with her parents and her brother Eddie in Bulgaria. “There were no cars in Bulgaria, I have such vivid memories of horse-drawn carriages and snow, it’s all ingrained in me.” she shared in Release. The singer has had time to see the excesses of totalitarian power. “Stalin was plastered everywhere; we learned to worship him, we had to call him Uncle Stalin… It was abominable“, she remembered in Nathalie Lévy’s book.
His father was accused of being “a spy in the pay of the West” and it was to avoid prison for him that they had to leave. In 2015, in Paris Matchthe singer of the hits La Maritza, The most beautiful to go dancing or even Little Rainbow – who adopted her daughter Darina, with her husband Tony Scotti in Bulgaria, in 1997 – said that her arrival in Paris had been “source of anxiety and excitement“. This story marked her for life: “Since then, I can’t stand the idea of departures. (…) It remained tattooed in my heart.“
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