BEIRUT — The legendary Lebanese singer and actress Sabah passed away on Wednesday at age 87 of an unspecified illness in Beirut.

Born Jeanette Gergis Al-Feghali, the artist spent most of her career acting in Egypt during the golden age of Egyptian cinema in the 1950’s and 60’s.

Sabah released more than 50 albums and acted in 98 movies as well as over 20 stage plays. She has a reported 3,500 songs in her repertoire. 

Her last release, a remix of an old song, was in 2009.

She was the first Arabic singer who performed at Olympia in Paris, Carnegie Hall in New York, and Piccadilly Theatre in London and Sydney Opera House in Sydney.

The singer was born in Bdadoun, a Lebanese town in the Baabda-Aley province.

She is known for her multiple marriages, tying the knot with at least nine men.

She brought out her first song in 1940, while her parallel screen career began three years later in Egypt, the center of the Arabic film industry.

She held Egyptian, Jordanian and US citizenship as well as Lebanese, and continued to perform and make television appearances into her 80s.

Sabah was nicknamed “Shahroura”, Arabic for “singing bird” and “the Sabbouha”, a diminutive for “Sabah” by millions of fans across the Middle East.

Lebanese politician Walid Jumblatt wrote on Twitter: “She was a great singer of a Lebanon that my generation knew, that will never come back.”