By Luke Voogt
Adelaide songstress Michaela Burger cried when she first heard the music of Edith Piaf, beginning a lifelong obsession with the French icon.
Burger was on exchange in France at age 17 when her host mother handed her a boxset of Piaf’s greatest hits.
“I thought ‘why am I crying when I didn’t even understand what she’s talking about?’” she told the Indy.
But when she read up on the legendary singer she discovered why.
“She gave her whole being to her music and audience,” she said.
Burger will perform as Piaf for the first time in Geelong after seasons at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Leicester Square Theatre and Adelaide Cabaret Festival.
“It’s always nice being in a new city,” the 38-year-old said.
“We’re looking forward to coming to Geelong.”
She sings alongside guitarist Greg Wain who helped inspire the show in 2012.
The pair met in Adelaide while busking and Burger asked Wain for guitar lessons.
“By the second lesson we were talking about how obsessed with Edith Piaf we were,” she said.
They spent months researching Piaf before putting together a tribute to her life.
“We, basically, researched all of her biographies that we knew,” Burger said.
“From that we gathered what we thought best told her story. We wanted to tell her story as a human, not just a performer.”
They toured for the next four years with the show between their other gigs. Exposing Edith comes to the Potato Shed, Drysdale, on 29 October.
Burger tells the story Edith’s life, loves and losses through the songs that shot her to stardom including La Vie en Rose, Milord and Non.
She punctuates the songs with tales in the guise of a multitude characters from half-sister Momone and Piaf’s lovers to the singer herself.
