Dalida was born Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti in Cairo, Kingdom of Egypt, on 17 January 1933. Her father Pietro Gigliotti (1904–1945) and mother Filomena Giuseppina (née d’Alba; 1904–1971) were born in Serrastretta, Calabria in Italy. Pietro studied music in school and played violin in taverns; Giuseppina was a seamstress.
Unable to make a living in their hometown, the young couple moved to the Shubra district of Cairo
the year they were married, where, between the births of Iolanda's
older brother Orlando (1930–1992) and younger brother Bruno (1936), the
Gigliotti family became well established in the community. In addition
to earnings from Giuseppina's work, their social status benefited when
Pietro became primo violino at Cairo's Khedivial Opera House, and the family bought a two-storey house.
At 10 months old, Iolanda caught an eye infection and had to wear bandages for 40 days. Her father would play lullabies
on the violin to soothe her. She underwent eye operations between the
ages of three and five. Having to wear glasses throughout elementary
school, for which she was bullied, she later recalled: "I was [sic]
enough of it, I would rather see the world in a blur than wear glasses,
so I threw them through the window." Iolanda attended the Scuola
Tecnica Commerciale Maria Ausiliatrice, an Italian Catholic school
located in northern Shubra.
In 1940, Allied forces
took her father and other Italian men from their quarter to the Fayed
prison camp in the desert near Cairo. When Pietro was released in 1944,
he returned home as a completely different person, so violent that
Iolanda and other children in the neighbourhood were scared of him. She
later recalled, "I hated him when he beat me, I hated him especially
when he beat my mom and brothers. I wanted him to die, and he did."
Iolanda was twelve when Pietro died of a brain abscess in 1945. That trauma influenced her search for a male partner the rest of her life. Modelling, acting; Miss Egypt 1954
In
her teen years, Iolanda developed an interest in acting due to her
uncle's job as a projectionist for a local cinema, and often
participated in school performances at the end of the semester, becoming
popular in the neighborhood. She graduated in 1951, but eventually
started working as a copy typist
in a pharmaceutical company in the same year. While required to work to
financially help her family, Iolanda still had acting ambitions as she
continued searching for an opportunity for a breakthrough.
Shortly thereafter, her best friend Miranda introduced her to
Miss Ondine, a minor Cairo beauty pageant which she joined under two
conditions: to be the minor one
and that her mom Giuseppina must not find out. When Iolanda won the
second prize and Miranda second runner-up, they were unexpectedly
photographed and came out in newspapers Le journal d'Égypte and Le progrès égyptien.
The next day when Giuseppina found out, she forcibly cut Iolanda's hair
short. Eventually, her mother gave up on her principles and Iolanda
left her job to start modelling for Donna, a then famous Cairo-based
fashion house. On her 21st birthday, Giuseppina gave her blessing for to
join the Miss Egypt 1954 competition. Held during spring in the salons of the L'auberge des pyramides,
she made a sensation of appearing in a two-piece panther-print bikini.
The judges were overwhelmed and Iolanda won the title, automatically
becoming the representative of Egypt on Miss World 1955 in London.
As the election was attended by three film directors, the victory opened her the doors of the Egyptian cinema; Marco de Gastyne cast her in The Mask of Tutankhamun (1954) and Niazi Mostafa for leading role in A Glass and a Cigarette (1954),
on which posters she appears with her newly adopted stage name Dalila
because, as she explained in 1968, "it was a very frequent name in Egypt
and I liked it a lot."
The third offer was a longer period contract by an Egyptian film
producer that she turned down after Gastyne advised her to try her luck
in Paris. Thus, Dalila also decided to not represent Egypt on Miss World 1955, but Egypt did not compete that year because of the Suez Crisis.
Relocation to Paris and decisive 421 dice game
On 25 December 1954, Dalila left Egypt for Paris.
Her first residence was a room in an apartment of Gastyne's friend, the
impresario Vidal. She met with a number of directors, auditioned for
movie roles, but failed each time. Vidal relocated her to a smaller
apartment where her first neighbour was Alain Delon (then still unknown to the wider public), with whom she had a brief relationship.
Dalila's difficulty in finding acting work throughout 1955 led
her to try singing. Vidal introduced her to Roland Berger, a friend and
professor who agreed to give her singing lessons 7 days per week at a
low price. He was very strict and used to yell, with Dalila responding
even more loudly.
Their lessons sometimes ended with her slamming the door but she always
returned the next day. Seeing her progress, Berger arranged for her to
perform in the famous cabaret Le Drap d'Or on Champs-Élysées, where she was spotted by Jacques Paoli, the director of another famous cabaret La Villa d'Este.
Paoli engaged her for a series of performances that proved popular, and
Dalila received her first attention of public in France among which was
Bruno Coquatrix, the director of Olympia, who specially invited her to
perform at his singing contest Les Numéros 1 de demain. In future
years, Coquatrix said: "[H]er voice is full of colour and volume, and
has all that men love: gentleness, sensuality and eroticism." Dalila was
also spotted by author and screenwriter Alfred Marchand, who advised to
change her name to Dalida: "Your pseudonym resembles too much of the
movie Samson and Dalila and it won't help to boost your popularity. Why don't you replace the second 'l' with a 'd', like God the father?" She immediately accepted the change.
On 9 April 1956, Dalida participated in the singing contest Les Numéros 1 de demain, performing Etrangère au Paradis. Prior to the competition, Eddie Barclay, owner of the largest producing house in France, Barclay, and Lucien Morisse, artistic director of the newly established radio station Europe n°1,
met in Bar Romain (now Petit Olympia) and discussed what to do that
evening. Barclay wanted to watch a film, whereas Morisse wanted to
attend the competition, which was being held at Olympia, then the
largest venue in Paris. They settled their disagreement by playing 421, a
dice game, which Morisse won.
Together with their friend Coquatrix, they were greatly impressed after
Dalida won the contest and arranged a meeting with her. That event was
later perpetuated in biopics and books, and became regarded as fateful
for Dalida's career. The three men went on to play a large part in
launching her career.
Career
1956–1959: Commercial breakout and fame
First contract and overnight success with Bambino
After the performance in Les Numéros 1 de demain, Lucien handed
Dalida his card to meet in his office as soon as possible, which she
accepted without hesitation. Few days later, on the second floor of the
building at 26 rue François ler, she performed Barco Negro, a recent hit
by Amália Rodrigues, humming the a cappella verses and tapping the
fingertips on a corner of Morisse's desk. Visibly satisfied, his
interlocutor demanded more work on mini-flaws, for a new audition in
front of Eddie Barclay in person.
On 2 May 1956 in Barclay's office at 20, Rue de Madrid, Dalida signed a
renewable one-year contract, with a modest percentage on record sales,
with the promise of increasing it if the expected success is
accomplished.
While Morisse was responsible for radio promotion, Coquatrix had
developed a strategy to grab the headlines. He planned to promote her
through a series of concerts, including two concerts at the Olympia, two
weeks in Bobino, and a tour of the provinces.
Her first song "Madona" was recorded in June and was first
released in August on EP with three other songs. "Madona" was played on
28 August 1956 on Radio Europe n°1, which was Dalida's first radio
appearance.
The record achieved sufficient success and was followed by second EP,
Le Torrent, a month later, which received an equally encouraging
welcome. Dalida continued performing live throughout the latter part of
1956, while her promoters worked on developing a song that would make
her a star; Morisse asked lyricist Jacques Larue to write a French
language version of "Guaglione", the winning song of recent fifth Festival di Napoli, which would become Bambino.
Bambino was released in early December only as a promo single,
but quickly receiving more public interest than all of her previous
recordings, Morisse started to heavily promote it and it was placed as
title song to Dalida's debut album Son nom est Dalida that was issued by the end of same month. The album was immediately followed with a third EP titled "Bambino". After debuting at number seven in January 1957,
Bambino reached number one and went on to become the biggest-selling
and one of the most beloved pop standard hits of the '50s in France,
Belgium, Canada and Switzerland. As the song knocked Doris Day's
"Whatever Will Be, Will Be" off the top of the French charts,
women began to emulate Dalida's makeup, resulting in the explosion of
Rimel sales, while the men saw in her a talent, sensuality and sexiness.
Coquatrix then named her "the first sex-symbol of the song".
"Bambino" was Dalida's first number-one hit, and through 1957 it became
the longest-running number-one in the world history, with a total of 39
consecutive weeks, still holding a record.
It made Dalida an overnight star and gained her first gold disc, the
very first time such an award had been received by a woman, on 19
September 1957 for sales of over 300,000.
As the French music industry was then still in the background,
"Bambino" was described in 2007 by Bertrand Dicale of Le Figaro as; "a
launch that announced what will happen in the coming decades ... a start
of really modern times where singer is more important than song".Promoting it in early 1957, Dalida also made her first TV appearance, and her contract was immediately extended for four years.
Then she also received her first criticism from a journalist: "On
stage, Dalida appears in beauty and warmth, highlighted by a
presentation of extreme sobriety."
Italian singer Dalida
has released forty-one studio album, twenty-one compilation album, five
live albums and one soundtrack album. In 1956 Dalida signed a recording
contract with Barclay Records, a label owned by Eddie Barclay. Orlando became her producer which resulted signing recording contract with Orlando. He still holds copyright on her releases and re-releases.
Albums are listed below and organised by type and language of
songs that they contain. The titles are taken from the covers, or title
songs, or if the title of one song is larger than the others. Some
albums are commonly named.
In other countries Dalida has released the same records whose cover art
was often different, and sometimes the track names were translated to
names of countries of release. Those albums are not listed here. This
list also doesn't contain any of albums that were released after her
death.
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Discography
https://paulcpw.blogspot.com/2020/01/mlk-day-day-to-reflect-on-his-life.html
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