Agda3 nas dalida biography

CAIRO – 17 January 2019: In celebration of what could have been the 86th birthday of Dalida, we remember a music legend that enjoyed massive presence and unprecedented popularity.

Born in then-diverse Cairo, Egypt, on January 17, 1933, Yolanda Cristina Gigliotti enjoyed a quiet, middle class childhood in Shobra, one of Cairo's oldest and most inclusive neighborhoods.

Her father, Pietro Gigliotti, was primo violino at the Cairo Opera House.

At 17, Yolanda won the Miss Ondine beauty pageant, which led her to become a model in Cairo and then win the Miss Egypt crown in 1954. On Christmas the same year, 21-year-old Yolanda moved to France to pursue an acting career and rechristened herself as Dalida.

However, Dalida achieved little success as an actress and so she went to sing in a cabaret on the Champs-Elysées and in a variety show at Bruno Coquatrix’s newly opened Olympia, where sh