Amelita Galli-Curci

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Amelita Galli-Curci, 1920

Amelita Galli-Curci (born November 18, 1882 in Milan , † November 26, 1963 in La Jolla , California ) was an Italian opera singer ( coloratura soprano ).

Amelita Galli-Curci celebrated significant successes in her career on the stages in Europe , South and North America . For some critics, she was one of the best coloratura sopranos and real divas of her era.

Life

Amelita Galli was born on November 18, 1882 as the daughter of the upper middle class Milanese businessman Enrico Galli and his wife Enrichetta Bellisoni. Enrichetta Bellisoni's parents, in turn, were a conductor and a soprano , so that Amelita's talent was inherited over a generation.

At the age of five she received piano lessons from her mother. Two years later she saw her first opera : Les Huguenots (The Huguenots) by Giacomo Meyerbeer . But she was more into ballet than singing and had her puppets dance accordingly at home.

Galli's basic training began at the International Institute (1895–1901) and was continued at the Lizeum Alessandro Marzoni until 1905. Thanks to this training, she spoke five languages ​​fluently. She continued to study the piano. Inspired by her grandmother, she started singing. At the age of 23 she won first prize at her conservatory for her piano playing. After a short tour , she was offered a teaching position, which she initially accepted.

One of the first supporters of her career was the composer Pietro Mascagni, who was friends with her family . At a local recital to Vincenzo Bellini's I puritani, Mascagni listened to Amelita Galli, who had taken on the soprano part. Then he informed her that in his opinion she had the talent to be an exceptional singer, but not an outstanding pianist . You must do everything possible to come close to this goal. Galli promised him this and went to work himself, because the father no longer had the desired economic success and moved to Argentina with the two Amelitas brothers to make a fresh start. Amelita Galli stayed behind with her mother and was never to see her father again. Funding from her grandmother was also no longer possible, as she had died the year before Galli's decision to pursue a career as a singer. According to her own statements, she was forced to acquire a great deal of self-study by studying classical singing textbooks, listening to other sopranos and accompanying herself on the piano.

She made her debut in Trani in 1906 as Gilda in Rigoletto . The audience enthusiastically celebrated the still unknown soprano and after two years she was selected to sing the leading female role of Bettina at the premiere of Bizet's Don Procopio in Italian . It was soon noticed all over Italy.

In 1908 she married the Marchese Luigi Curci. She now also had his last name. After the divorce , she remarried in 1921. This time it was Homer Samuels, her Accompagnement , who usually accompanied her on the piano.

As mentioned above, they made extensive concert tours through Europe, Egypt and South America. In 1915 she sang two performances of Lucia di Lammermoor with Enrico Caruso in Buenos Aires . However, these were the only joint appearances with the legendary tenor .

Despite her previous successes, she arrived in the United States as a completely unknown artist. One of her discoverers in the United States was the music and singing teacher William Thorner, who recommended her voice to her future manager Charles Ludwig Wagner by phone alone. When Calvin Childs invited him to test recordings at the Victor Talking Machine Company a little later, he convinced himself of her class and quickly offered the artist , whom he referred to as the “ Mona Lisa ” of the opera, a three-year contract for 600 US dollars per performance. Originally only a short stay and the role of Gilda in Rigoletto in Chicago was planned. However, the reviews from the local press and audience excitement were so enthusiastic that she agreed to stay with the Chicago Opera Company until 1924.

In 1916 she signed a contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company, where she had recordings of her singing recorded until 1930. This contract turned out to be a clever advancement of her career, as the company organized a tour of the country after its first successes. Her first records became bestsellers ; we sold by Caro Nome 10,000 plates of the first edition, which was a little expected number at that time. Their around 100 recordings have established their fame to this day due to their timeless brilliance. After losing her voice, she used these recordings for singing lessons.

From 1921 she was part of the ensemble of the Metropolitan Opera in New York . She officially said goodbye to the opera stage in 1930, since she believed that the old opera in the form she was familiar with had no future and was limited to concerts . A subsequent European tour proved to be a failure.

Since she had suffered from inflammation of the vocal cords for many years , in 1935, suspected of having cancer, she decided to have goiter surgery under local anesthesia, but this failed because a nerve was irreparably damaged. As a result, she was no longer able to play high notes with absolute brilliance.

A comeback attempt in the following year as Mimi in La Bohème in Chicago failed accordingly, although the critics were politely cautious about her. In 1936/37 she tried her hand at a few singing evenings, where the reviews were positive but not enthusiastic. She then recognized that her voice had passed its zenith at the age of 55 and she and her husband Homer Samuels retired to a contented private life in California, where she continued to give singing lessons and take part in cultural life. After the death of her husband in 1956, she moved to La Jolla in a house specially built according to her ideas, where she died in 1963, eight days after her birthday at the age of 81.

repertoire

Others

Louis Armstrong is said to have bought recordings by Amelita Galli-Curci from his first earned money in addition to a windable Victrola record player , the comprehensible jazz records .

Amelita Galli-Curci lived in Highmount when she was in New York . In 1922, in Margaretville , a town nearby , she sang at the opening of a cinema, which is why it was named Galli-Curci Theater in her honor .

literature

  • Harriette M. Brower / James Francis Cooke: Great Singers on the Art of Singing, Courier Dover Publications 1996, ISBN 0-486-29190-1
  • Lanfranco Rasponi, Alfred A Knopf: The Last Prima Donnas, 1982. ISBN 0-394-52153-6

Web links

Commons : Amelita Galli-Curci  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Training the Singing Voice - The Methods of Manuel Garcia and the Principles of FM Alexander (PDF file; 87 kB)
  2. ↑ Andrew Farkas (Ed.): Seeing Stars , Ayer Publishing 1977 (1st ed. 1940), p. 178ff. ISBN 0-405-09714-X
  3. ↑ Pekka Gronow, Ilpo Saunio: An International History of the Recording Industry , London: Continuum International Publishing Group 1999, p. 65, ISBN 0-304-70590-X .
  4. ^ Susan Rutherford: The Prima Donna and Opera, 1815-1930, Cambridge University Press 2006, ISBN 0-521-85167-X , p. 261
  5. ^ David Ewen: Musicians Since 1900: Performers in Concert and Opera, HW Wilson Co 1978, ISBN 0-8242-0565-0 , p. 280
  6. ↑ Jazz: the classical music of globalization: "No wonder that in Satchmo's music the operatic flamboyance and bravura were always present even without direct quoting of individual pieces." ( Memento of the original from November 10, 2005 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.satchmoz.at
  7. ↑ Kathleen LaFrank: Galli-Curci Theater ( English ) In: National Register of Historic Places nomination . New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation . October 2005. Archived from the original on October 6, 2012. Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved February 10, 2010. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.oprhp.state.ny.us
personal data
SURNAME Galli-Curci, Amelita
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian opera singer (coloratura soprano)
DATE OF BIRTH November 18, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Milan , Italy
DATE OF DEATH November 26, 1963
Place of death La Jolla , California , United States