Elda Viler

Elda Viler, full name Elda Viler Dežman, is a Slovenian pop singer, born on 17 December 1944 in Koštabona, a village in the Šavrini hills of Slovenian Istria, where she grew up. As a young woman she auditioned in Koper for the television show Pokaži kaj znaš; an invitation from Ljubljana soon followed, and with it concerts, festivals and many awards.

She was at her most popular in the 1960s and 1970s, the heyday of Slovenska popevka, singing songs by the leading composers Mojmir Sepe, Ati Soss, Jure Robežnik and Jože Privšek, to words above all by Elza Budau, Gregor Strniša and Branko Šömen. She took part five times in the Yugoslav selection for the Eurovision Song Contest in Opatija and finished second with "Ko si z menoj" (1966), "Če bi teden štel osem dni" (1968) and "Neodposlano pismo" (1974). At the Split festival she sang "Dekle na obali" (1968), "Ko svet je bil mlad" (1969) and "Val na valu spi" (1972), and she also appeared at Beogradsko proleće, Vaš šlager sezone in Sarajevo and Melodije morja in sonca.

Elda Viler recorded more than 300 songs; among her biggest hits are "Ti si moja ljubezen", "Nora misel", "Lastovke" and "Zlati prah imaš v očeh". She toured Italy, Belgium, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Germany, France, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Russia and Australia.

In the 1990s she withdrew from music, disappointed when the Ministry of Culture took away her status as a freelance artist on the grounds that she did not make contemporary music. She stopped singing altogether until 1997, when she was persuaded to sing at a jubilee concert. Her daughter Ana Dežman, also a singer, did much to bring her back, and from 2005 she performed regularly again. Her albums include Elda (1982), Včeraj, danes, jutri (2000), Tako kot da me ni (2002), Jubilej (2005) and Rajska ptica (2009), and in 2006 she sang "Od vesielja se živi" with Edvin Fliser at the dialect song festival.

In 2009 RTV Slovenija and Festival Ljubljana marked fifty years since her first performance with the concert Poletna noč at Križanke, where her guests included her daughter Ana and Oto Pestner. She was married to the musician Anton Dežman, who died in 1999. In January 2026 she announced that she was leaving the stage for good and gave a farewell concert at Cankarjev dom on 14 February 2026; two days earlier the President of Slovenia awarded her the Order of Merit for her contribution to Slovenian popular music.