Yolande Christina Gigliotti was born in Choubra, a district of Cairo on 17 January 1933 the child of Italian immigrants from Calabria.

Her father played the violin at Cairo Opera House.

At the time no one could have guessed what an incredible career lay in front of her.

The ugly duckling would grow into an attractive woman capturing the hearts of men.

In 1954 she won the beauty contest Miss Ondina, but her career really got off to a good start when in that same year 21-year-old Yolande was elected Miss Egypt.

Cairo to Paris, December 1954

A the dawn of her twenty-second birthday, a young dark-haired lady with a queenly bearing in a plane is experiencing the adventure of her life.

Midway between the lights of her own city and the idealized city of lights, flying from east to west "Bint Choubra" allows herself to get carried away by a thousand and one dreams buzzing through her head.

Crazy, naïve and childhood-dreams of glory and happiness, but also dreams of becoming a movie star, the reason for her flight. Driven by faith and determination strong enough to shake the pyramids, Yolanda Gigliotti is waiting her chance...

Highlights

Dalida, a singer that can not be ignored; a singer magnified by an exceptional career, but also a fragile, shy and touching person, who - through her music - assembled and dismantled the jigsaw of her life.

Dalida somehow went down in legend in the same beautiful way as she used to make her entrance: both queenly, touching and dignified under a thunder of applause.

Standing up right into the sunlight, a Madonna of flesh and blood in the crossfire of the spotlights: that was how she chose to live her life, without concealing any of the cracks, sharing it all with her vast public.

Punctuated by an impressive list of achievements, her career is a model on more than one account: Dalida was the first artist ever awarded a gold record, she was the first singer in Europe to have fans, she was the pioneer of French disco music and she was the first ever female singer to keep the Palais des Sports concert hall in Paris full for three weeks.

Ten years, 120 million records and one thousand songs later she performed at the Palais des Sports Several months later, the singer performed this show in two Near Eastern countries dear to her heart: Egypt and Lebanon.

Dalida is also the third lady, after Sarah Bernhardt and Jeanne d'Arc to have a Paris square named after her!  

Paris to Cairo, beginning of 1986

In the plane taking her back to Egypt, a lady is about to achieve to achieve what she has always dreamed of about to loop the loop.

More than thirty years have passed since that day when Yolanda, "Bint Choubra" or the “girl of Choubra”, the district of Cairo where she was born decided that what she wanted more than anything else in the world was to be the centre of attention in front of the camera.

But beyond the golden lady with the profile of an Egyptian goddess (hundreds of gold records, golden hair galore and, above all, a heart in solid gold sheltered from any dishonest compromise) beyond the honours paid by many countries throughout the world, the most evocative and even touching testimonies from the Dalida universe remain above all her songs.

In the XX century, there was one 'Callas', one 'Piaf', and one 'Dalida.'