Her first major public performance was in 1942, when, though still a teenager, she played the principal role of Shirin at the Jame’eh Barbod opera house in the Persian operetta Shirin and Farhad.Following the Islamic Revolution of 1979 public performances and broadcasts of record albums by solo female singers were banned outright for ten years. Ayatollah Khomeini had decreed: “Women’s voices should not be heard by men other than members of their own families.