Amelita Galli Curci
Soprano
November 18, 1822

Galli Curci was born in Milan, Italy into an upper middle class family of Italo-Spanish heritage. Her musical prowess was evident at an early age graduating from the Milan Conservatorium and winning the first prize as a pianist in 1903.

We have the opera composer Piero Mascagni to thank for encouraging her to have some vocal lessons with Carignani and Sara Dufes, but apparently she remained mainly self taught as she began her career using piano exercises and treatises available from the former greats to hone her vocal skills.^[1] Later in New York she coached with coloratura soprano Estelle Liebling.^[2]

She debuted as Gilda in Verdi’s Rigoletto at the age of 24 and became increasingly more successful over the next eight years in the coloratura repertoire not only in Italy but in Spain,  Egypt, Russia and Central and South America. During this time in Buenos Aires she sang two performances of Lucia di Lammermoor with Enrico Caruso.

Having only been offered a contract for minor roles at La Scala in Milan, she vowed never to sing there in the future. Looking for more opportunities he sights were set across the Atlantic. She married the aristocrat Marchese Luigi Curci an aspiring painter architect, costume and set designer and they became the toast of Italian society.

In New York, Galli-Curci hoped to be engaged by the Metropolitan Opera, but Maestro Gatti-Cassazza had already hired his wife, Maria Barrientos, to sing all the coloratura soprano roles that season. Fortunately, Cleofonte Campanini, of the struggling Chicago Opera, was in town looking for singers and was willing to give the diva a chance. Against Luigi’s (her husband) wishes, the Curci family packed their bags and moved to Chicago.^[3]

Her much-anticipated Met debut in the same opera was slated for Opening Night, November 14, 1921, alongside two fellow Italians, tenor Beniamino Gigli, who inherited much of Caruso’s lyric repertory, and baritone Giuseppe De Luca. The new production, designed by Joseph Urban and conducted by Roberto Moranzoni, did not disappoint. Max Smith reviewing for the Herald American wrote:

“How fascinating is Amelita’s impersonation of Violetta, already made familiar during her association with the visiting Chicago Opera Company! How imaginatively vivacious in the first act; how pathetic in the second; how tragic in the last. It was fitting, indeed, that Giulio Gatti-Casazza should bring forward his latest “star” in Traviata. For surely no other role reveals her own peculiar powers, histrionic as well as vocal, to greater advantage: None permits her to disclose more affectingly the characteristic delicacy of her art, the essentially feminine charm of her persuasions.”

Comparisons with the greatest coloraturas of the recent past—Adelina Patti, Marcella Sembrich, Luisa Tetrazzini—followed in the press, proving that even for those who found faults with the new diva, she had clearly joined an illustrious line of bel canto virtuosos. In addition to her appearances in opera and numerous recital tours, Galli-Curci’s fame rested equally on her best-selling recordings. Sales for her records rivalled those of Caruso, and she often recorded popular or light songs as well as opera arias. Her distinctive vocal timbre—soft-grained, velvety, and pure—transferred well to records even by the crude technology of the time.”^[4]

Her fame and popularity spread. 1918 was a pivotal year in Galli-Curci’s development as an international star. In addition to being followed by paparazzi (which she adored), Amelita became a celebrity endorser for RCA Victor’s “Talking Machines,” appearing in full-page ads in the New York Times in glamorous outfits throughout 1918 and 1919. She also extolled the virtues of cosmetics, furs, and automobiles.

After the Armistice in 1918, Luigi begged Amelita to return to Italy to save their marriage, but Amelita refused to give up stardom and her affair with Homer Samuels, her rehearsal accompanist in Chicago.

 Luigi demanded a divorce, and a public scandal ensued, appearing in the society pages of Chicago papers for almost a year.

Amelita Galli-Curci and Homer Samuels were married in Homer’s parents’ home in Minneapolis on Jan. 15, 1921, and Amelita became an American citizen. She never returned to Italy.

The couple bought a country home in the Catskill Mountains in Upstate New York. They called their getaway “Sul Monte” and escaped the stress of Galli-Curci’s career whenever possible.^[5]

The rigours of being in such demand and popularity in both two major opera houses Chicago and New York started to tell in her voice, and in 1935 after refusing to acknowledge an ever increasing growth in her neck and the subsequent pain it caused her, she agreed to have the goitre caused by thyroid disjunction removed by a doctor who was not perturbed by operating on such a famous golden throat. On the contrary he apparently bathed in the glory and many photo opportunities were made with his famous patient. However, the operation was not without consequences, and she was never able to move into the lyric and dramatic soprano repertoire that the doctor had led her to believe would be awaiting her after she healed. The dubious honour of having the damaged nerve, the external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve named after her ensued, and is still referred to as the “nerve of Galli Curci” up until this  day.

In their retirement years Galli Curci and her husband Homer became interested in Eastern spirituality and were active members of the Yogananda Society. Galli Curci wrote the forward to Paramahansa Yogananda’s 1929 book Whispers from Eternity. Yogananda’s most famous book being Autobiography of a Yogi, a work known to have inspired many people worldwide, including George Harrison and Apple founder Steve Jobs.

 

In a video recording Joan Sutherland recounts how she and her husband Richard Bonynge were very excited to have the opportunity to meet their vocal heroine, and apart from exchanging Coloratura talk, she reminisced on how she was very taken by the style and presence of the diva when she opened the door to greet them completely dressed in matching pink apart from a tortoise shell comb in her hair. Sutherland lovingly ordered pink note paper in her honour which always made her remember her.^[6]

She was also appreciated and honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Galli Curci died eight days after her 81st birthday at her home in California.

From the forward of  Whispers of Eternity she wrote:

“The followers of all religions can drink from this fountain of universal prayers. These invocations are the answer to the modern scientific mind, which seeks God intelligently. The prayers in this book are presented in great variety, and therefore enable each one of us to choose those prayers best suited and helpful to his own particular needs.

My humble request to the readers is expressed in the following lines:

Pass not by, with hurried intellectual reading, the mines of realization hidden in the soil nourishing the word plants in this book. As the author tells us, dig into them deeply, daily and repeatedly, with a pickaxe of attentive, reverential, and meditative study. Then you will find the priceless gem of Self-realization.” ^[7]

YouTube video with an array of photos including Galli Curci on her Australian tour pictured with a Kookaburra (another famous bird with an amazing trill!)^[8]

 NOTES 

^[1] SHAWE-TAYLOR, DESMOND. AMELITA GALLI-CURCI IN MACY, LAURA (EDITOR) THE GROVE BOOK OF OPERA SINGERS. ACADEMIC PUBLISHERS 2008. pp. 174-175

^[2] IBID.

^[3] HALPERN, JULIE S., THE DIVA VANISHES.  CSMUSIC.NET., SEPT 1, 2004 

^[4] CLARK, PETER., THE MET WITHOUT CARUSO: MAJOR DEBUTS 100 YEARS AGO. NO DATE PROVIDED BY AUTHOR

^[5] IBID.

^[6] CASTLES-ONION. BRIAN., POSTED ON YOUTUBE 2022. 

^[7] SELF-REALISATION FELLOWSHIP (AUTHOR) WHISPERS FROM ETERNITY 1959. AVAILABLE FROM GOOGLE BOOMS WHISPERS FROM ETERNITY. PARAMAHANSA YOGANANDA 

^[8] IBID.