“Dalida, fragile star”, a Paris Match special issue

Dalida had everything of a queen, but her kingdom was made of solitude. The story of a woman who never stopped running away from her inner demons, without ever managing to outrun them. When Yolanda Cristina Gigliotti arrived alone in Paris at Christmas 1954, it was a first disappointment. He was promised a career in cinema which does not exist. So she turned to singing. Where his hoarse and sunny voice which rolls the “r” immediately seduces.

She is spotted by the boss of the Olympia and then “Bambino”, which explodes in 1956. The machine goes into overdrive. In just a few years, she became a star. The successes follow one another but his triumphs seem to have made a Faustian pact with misfortune. Because moments of glory are also accompanied by intimate wounds. Her marriage to Lucien Morisse, her pygmalion, collapses. Then comes the Sanremo tragedy in 1967: Luigi Tenco, the love of her life, commits suicide after their failure at the festival. Dalida in turn tries to die. She survives, but something broke. An abortion left her sterile the same year, forever burying her dream of motherhood.

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The years go by, the successes remain but become harder and harder to maintain. She changes her style, her hair color, her repertoire, as if to escape from herself. But this perpetual flight masks a more desperate quest: that of a love that would not leave her, of a happiness that would finally agree to settle down. In her house in Montmartre, her Sleeping Beauty castle, she waits for a prince who will never come. His repertoire becomes the intimate diary of his suffering, transforming his songs into a public confession. This woman who sang “Die on stage” in 1983 finally chose to leave in the solitude of her home.

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Artist’s paradox: she who never found the love she was looking for during her lifetime has received for thirty-five years a perpetual declaration of love from an always loyal audience. She who chased happiness has become an immortal icon, adored by new generations who recognize themselves in her fragility. In this special issue, through unpublished archive images and exclusive testimonies like that of her brother Orlando, we hope to have succeeded in showing her as she would have liked to be remembered: luminous and sometimes happy.

“Dalida, fragile star”

Our special issue “Dalida, fragile star”, 92 pages of exclusive photos and reports dedicated to the singer, available at your newsagent and on our online store.

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