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50 free Édith Piaf trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Édith Piaf trivia quiz follows the Little Sparrow from a Belleville birth certificate to Père Lachaise. The easy questions cover her signature song, her height, the nickname that became her stage name, the boxer she loved and the actress who won an Oscar playing her. Then it digs into the biography: the nurse she was named after, the Normandy brothel where she was raised, the childhood blindness, the murdered nightclub owner who discovered her, the black dress, and the wartime accusations she had to answer. The hard end is for chanson devotees: who really wrote the music for La Vie en rose, which regiment adopted Non, je ne regrette rien, the composer she kept waiting for an hour, the songs she wrote for Marcel Cerdan and Yves Montand, the singers she launched, her two husbands, the Olympia concerts that saved a venue, her last recording and the Requiem Mass the Church finally granted her fifty years late. Every answer was checked against the encyclopaedia entries on Piaf, her major songs, Marcel Cerdan, Théo Sarapo and the 2007 film before publishing, and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our French music, Paris and 1950s music quizzes are natural next stops.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Édith Piaf's signature song, whose lyrics she wrote herself in 1945, is which?
La Vie en rose
It sold a million copies in the United States and entered the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1998.
Q 02What was Édith Piaf's surname at birth?
Gassion
Her father Louis Gassion was an acrobatic street performer from Normandy.
Q 03Piaf's first name was inspired by which British nurse, executed two months before her birth?
Edith Cavell
Cavell was shot by the Germans in 1915 for helping Allied soldiers escape occupied Belgium.
Q 04In French slang, what does 'piaf' mean?
A small bird
Her first promoter coined the stage name; the fuller nickname 'La Môme Piaf' means 'The Sparrow Kid'.
Q 05How tall was Édith Piaf?
142 cm (4 ft 8 in)
Her tiny frame and extreme stage nerves prompted Louis Leplée to nickname her the Sparrow Kid.
Q 06In which town was the brothel run by Piaf's grandmother, where prostitutes cared for her as a child?
Bernay
The house had two floors and seven rooms, and its sub-mistress 'Madam Gaby' later became godmother to Piaf's half-sister.
Q 07Piaf claimed she was cured of childhood blindness after a pilgrimage honouring which saint?
Thérèse of Lisieux
The brothel's prostitutes reportedly pooled their money to take her; she had been blind from about age three to seven with keratitis.
Q 08At what age did Piaf join her father's acrobatic street act and begin singing in public?
14
A year later she met Simone 'Mômone' Berteaut, who later falsely claimed in a memoir to be her half-sister.
Q 09Piaf's only child, Marcelle, died in 1935 at the age of two from which illness?
Meningitis
Piaf had given birth at seventeen; Marcelle is buried with her at Père Lachaise.
Q 10Which nightclub owner discovered Piaf singing on the street in 1935?
Louis Leplée
He told her to wear a black dress on stage, which became her trademark for life.
Q 11Who led the band on the night of Piaf's nightclub debut in 1935?
Django Reinhardt
His pianist that evening was Norbert Glanzberg, who later composed the melody of 'Padam, padam...'.
Q 12What happened to the nightclub owner who had discovered Piaf, in April 1936?
He was murdered by mobsters
Piaf was questioned as an accessory and acquitted, but the scandal nearly ended her career.
Q 13After the Leplée scandal, which lyricist and lover rebuilt Piaf's image and renamed her Édith Piaf?
Raymond Asso
He commissioned Marguerite Monnot to write songs alluding to her old life on the streets.
Q 21Which French boxing champion did Piaf fall in love with during a 1947 tour of America?
Marcel Cerdan
He was the reigning middleweight world champion, married with three children, and the affair made headlines worldwide.
Q 22Piaf's boxer lover died in 1949 when his flight crashed during a stopover in which islands?
The Azores
He was flying to see Piaf ahead of a rematch with Jake LaMotta; violinist Ginette Neveu died in the same crash.
Q 23Which song did Piaf record in May 1950 and dedicate to her lover killed in the 1949 air crash?
Hymne à l'amour
She wrote the words herself to music by Marguerite Monnot; Celine Dion sang it from the Eiffel Tower at the 2024 Olympics opening ceremony.
Q 14Which composer, a lifelong Piaf collaborator, wrote one of her first two records in 1935?
Marguerite Monnot
She went on to write the music for 'Hymne à l'amour' and 'Milord'.
Q 15In 1940 Piaf co-starred in the one-act play Le Bel Indifférent, written by which poet and filmmaker?
Jean Cocteau
Cocteau also wrote the foreword to her autobiography Au bal de la chance.
Q 16At the Moulin Rouge in 1944 Piaf worked with, and began an affair with, which singer-actor?
Yves Montand
She wrote him the lyrics to 'What Can I Do?' in 1947 and within a year he was one of France's biggest stars.
Q 17Which Jewish musician, famous for 'L'Accordéoniste', did Piaf pay to bring into France for safety in the war?
Michel Emer
Her Resistance-member secretary Andrée Bigard testified that she also helped prisoners escape from camps in Germany.
Q 18Who is credited with composing the music of 'La Vie en rose'?
Louiguy
Piaf wrote the words; the song was broadcast live before it was ever recorded.
Q 19Which singer's 1977 bossa nova version of 'La Vie en rose' became her first international hit?
Grace Jones
It was the last single from her debut album Portfolio and her first release on Island Records.
Q 20How many versions of 'La Vie en rose' reached the Billboard charts in the United States in 1950?
7
Tony Martin, Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Louis Armstrong were among those who recorded it.
Q 24Piaf's lover won the world middleweight title in 1948 by knocking out which champion?
Tony Zale
He lost the belt to LaMotta in Detroit in June 1949 after dislocating his shoulder in the first round.
Q 25Piaf's 1951 car accident was with which young singer, then her assistant and protégé?
Charles Aznavour
She broke an arm and two ribs, and the morphine prescribed afterwards became a lifelong dependency.
Q 26Who acted as matron of honour at Piaf's 1952 wedding to singer Jacques Pills?
Marlene Dietrich
Pills got Piaf into a detox clinic three times before they divorced in 1957.
Q 27Piaf's second husband, Théo Sarapo, was 20 years her junior and had formerly worked as what?
A hairdresser
His stage name is a French rendering of the Greek for 'I love you', chosen by Piaf herself.
Q 28Théo Sarapo's stage name, chosen by Piaf, approximates a Greek phrase meaning what?
I love you
On her death French law passed her seven million francs of debts straight to him, and he was evicted on Christmas Day 1963.
Q 29Piaf and Sarapo had a hit duet in 1962 with which song?
À quoi ça sert l'amour ?
Their last recording together, 'L'Homme de Berlin', was made in April 1963, months before her death.
Q 30Who composed 'Non, je ne regrette rien', the song Piaf first sang in her 1961 concerts?
Charles Dumont
She had rejected his songs for years and kept him waiting an hour that day, then declared it the song she had been waiting for.