#serrastretta

La Bambola (1968) - sung by Italian (Calabrian) singer Dalida

A few days after Madonna’s cover of Patty Pravo’s La Bambola it’s worth recalling a lesser-known yet significant version: Dalida’s.

An iconic European performer, Dalida had deep roots in Southern Italy's Calabria. Her parents came from Serrastretta, a mountain village on the slopes of Mount Reventino. From there, the family emigrated before settling in Egypt, where Dalida was born in 1933, and later moved to Paris.

Born Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti, Dalida was one of the most prominent artists of the 1960s, known for crossing genres, languages, and national borders with ease.

In 1962, at the height of her career, she returned to Serrastretta. On April 5th, her arrival drew a large public welcome, with local authorities, a municipal band, and residents gathering in the town square. She was named an honorary citizen and she performed in a charity event whose proceeds were donated to a local orphanage. During that visit, Dalida did more than perform — she reconnected with her family’s past, meeting relatives and experiencing the place where her ancestors once lived.

La Bambola is not only associated with Patty Pravo. In Dalida’s interpretation, the song reflects a broader Mediterranean trajectory — carried by a voice that reached audiences across France, Belgium, and beyond, while remaining quietly connected to its Calabrian origins.

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Serrastretta, Calabria, Italy

Nestled in the gentle highlands of Calabria, Serrastretta is a village where forest, tradition and craftsmanship meet in quiet harmony. All around the town, ancient chestnut and beech woods whisper of the old mountain plateau of the Sila, their trees once the raw material for a proud local craft.

In small workshops and modest homes, skilled artisans still shape the timber of local trees into solid frames, then turn to the delicate weaving of seats made of “vùda” — a strong marsh-plant fiber — to complete the traditional chairs for which Serrastretta is famous.

Each chair tells a story – of the forest from which the wood was born, of hands that still know how to coax beauty from grain, of generations working beside the echo of the saw and the soft tap of the weaver’s tool. The result is both rugged and refined: furniture that speaks of mountain air and time-honoured skill.

Visiting Serrastretta is to walk among shaded woodland paths, then step into the warm glow of a wood-shop where you’ll sense the scent of fresh cut beech, the hum of life in the workshop, and the calm dignity of a craft kept alive.

Serrastretta, Calabria, Italy

Photos by Alessandro Scalise and web

Serrastretta, Calabria, Italy

Serrastretta is a center of production of furniture, kitchens, door-frames, casings and furnishings of every kind. Above all are the woven-straw chairs, for which Serrastretta is considered to be one of the main Calabrese producers. The chair makers continue to construct chairs as in the past - a frame made of wood, to which the women expertly apply the woven straw seats with a special bush "vuda", coming from the plants in the marshlands.

In the territory of Serrastretta also porcini mushrooms are found, particularly in areas where chestnut trees grow. There is also a museum devoted to the singer Dalida, whose parents originally came from Serrastretta.

Photo by @pasquale_._76, calabriapost.net and @antonio_mb180

Dalida - The Beloved European Singer’s Calabrian Roots

Although she became famous worldwide as Dalida, she was born Iolanda Cristina Gigliotti in Cairo, Kingdom of Egypt, on 17 January 1933.

What is Dalida's Calabrian connection? 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.

Dalida was born in Egypt after her parents settled there, a move they made so that her father could pursue his career as a concert violinist.

By birth, Dalida automatically gained Italian nationality through jus sanguinis of both Italian parents.

Dalida singing the traditional Calabrian song "Calabrisella mia" (translation: "My sweet Calabrian girl") with actor John Dorelly on Italian national television:

She and her parents have maintained a strong bond with their roots over time, not only emotional, but also cultural and bureaucratic.

Dalida, in fact, even after moving to France, maintained her Italian citizenship and became French, with dual citizenship, only with her marriage to Lucien Morisse in 1961.

Dalida's visit to that small mountain town in Calabria, where her parents were born, Serrastretta, was unforgettable.

The singer decided to include an extra charity concert date in Catanzaro in her Italian tour, precisely to travel for the first time to the town that was the birthplace of her loved ones. Here she visited the house where her parents lived before moving to Egypt:

And she also met her cousins and her great-aunt who was still alive, played the tambourine and embraces the football team that bears his name.

The much idolized Dalida, the first woman to win the Platinum Record and for whom the Diamond Record was created, took to the stage of the Municipal Theatre of Serrastretta. All the newspapers talked about it. And at the moment of her departure from Sant'Eufemia station (modern Lamezia Terme), the tears flowed freely, so much so that a few days before the end of the tour, Dalida wrote to the mayor.

A shot that immortalizes Dalida's visit to the mountain village of Serrastretta, photographed next to the then mayor, Menotti Mancuso (1962)

«I would like to express to you again all the joy I felt in getting to know my family's town - wrote Dalida following a visit to Serrastretta in the 1960s -, and thank you for the warm and enthusiastic welcome you gave me. I will never forget the emotion I felt in finding myself among all of you and I ask you to pass on, both to my cousins and to all the inhabitants of Serrastretta, the thanks that come from the bottom of my heart."

Dalida in Calabria in 1962, photographed by Ezio Arcuri, upon arrival at the Sant'Eufemia Lamezia station (reportage archive)

Dalida spent her early years in Egypt’s bustling Italian Egyptian community but she lived most of her adult life in France.

Beloved singer both in Italy and France, unforgettable queen of the Paris Olympia, during her career she sold over 170 million albums all over the world, also earning the first diamond record in history in 1981, created specifically for her.

Away from the spotlight, however, many great sorrows accompanied his life, which was interrupted - at the age of 54 - on 3 May 1987 by an overdose of barbiturates. «La vie m'est unbearable. Pardonnez moi/Forgive me, life is unbearable for me" wrote Dalida in her farewell note, found on the bedside table of her bedroom, in the villa at number 11 bis Rue d'Orchampt in Montmartre.

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Drying bunches of oregano in Serrastretta, Calabria, Italy

Serrastretta is a tiny village at 1000 mt above the level sea, in the Calabrian mountains and is surrounded by immense and dense beech forests and chestnut trees and numerous sources of spring water.

Serrastretta was long called “the city of chairs,’’ because generations of artisans handcrafted furniture from beech wood with seats fashioned from woven reeds.

In the territory of Serrastretta also porcini mushrooms are found, particularly in areas where chestnut trees grow.

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ALCUNE SUE FOTO ESPOSTE NELLA “CASA MUSEO DALIDA” DI SERRASTRETTA (more…)