Amelita Galli-Curci (soprano) - The Nightingale (Alabieff) (1927)

Amelita Galli-Curci sings The Nightingale,' with an orchestra of 23 men conducted by Rosario Bourdon (flute obbligato by Clement Barone), recorded in Liederkranz Hall, New York, on 13 December 1928.

For those interested in such things, the orchestra assembled for the session was the standard 10 man Victor Orchestra plus 13 extra men, and comprised 6 violins, 2 violas, 2 cellos, 2 basses, 2 clarinets, bassoon, oboe, flute, 2 trumpets, trombone, tuba, harp, and traps.

From Wikipedia: Amelita Galli-Curci (18 November 1882 – 26 November 1963) was an Italian coloratura soprano...

She was born as Amelita Galli into an upper-middle-class Italian family of Spanish heritage in Milan, where she studied piano at the Milan Conservatory, winning a gold medal for piano performance... By her own choice, Galli-Curci's voice was largely self-trained at the beginning of her career. She honed her technique by listening to other sopranos, reading old singing-method books, and doing piano exercises with her voice instead of using a keyboard. She later studied regularly with Estelle Liebling for more than a decade in New York City in the 1920s and 1930s.

Galli-Curci made her operatic debut in 1906 at Trani, as Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto, and she rapidly became acclaimed throughout Italy for the sweetness and agility of her voice and her captivating musical interpretations...

She toured widely in Europe, Russia and South America...

Galli-Curci toured extensively throughout her career, including a 1924 Great Britain concert tour (she never sang in an opera there), where she appeared in 20 cities and a tour of Australia a year later.

Galli-Curci first arrived in the United States in the autumn of 1916 as a virtual unknown. Her stay in the US was intended to be brief, but the acclaim she received for her historic American debut as Gilda in Rigoletto in Chicago, Illinois, on 18 November 1916 (her 34th birthday) was so wildly enthusiastic that she accepted an offer to extend her association with the Chicago Opera Association, where she appeared until the end of the 1924 season. Also in 1916, Galli-Curci signed a recording contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company and made her first records a few weeks before her American debut. She recorded exclusively for Victor until 1930.

On 14 November 1921, while still under contract with the Chicago Opera, Galli-Curci made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Violetta in La Traviata, opposite tenor Beniamino Gigli as Alfredo. She was one of the few singers of that era who were contracted to both opera companies simultaneously. Galli-Curci remained at the Met until her retirement from the operatic stage nine years later...

Weary of opera house politics and convinced that opera was a dying art form, Galli-Curci retired from the operatic stage in 1930 to concentrate instead on concert performances. Throat problems and the uncertain pitching of top notes had plagued her for several years, and she underwent surgery in 1935 for the removal of a thyroid goitre. Great care was taken during her surgery, which was performed under local anesthesia; however, it was thought her voice suffered following the surgery, specifically, a nerve to her larynx, the external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve, was thought to have been damaged, resulting in the loss of her ability to sing high pitches. This nerve has since become known as the 'nerve of Galli-Curci...'

In 1908, Amelita Galli wed an Italian nobleman and painter, the Marchese Luigi Curci, attaching his surname to hers. They divorced in 1920. The Marchese Curci petitioned the papal council in Rome for an annulment of the marriage in 1922. In 1921, Galli-Curci married Homer Samuels, her accompanist. Their marriage lasted until Samuels' death in 1956...

On 24 November 1936, Galli-Curci, aged 54, made an ill-advised return to opera, appearing in a single performance as Mimi in La Bohème in Chicago. It was painfully clear that her best singing days were behind her and after another year of recitals she went into complete retirement, living in California. She taught singing privately until shortly before her death from emphysema in La Jolla, California on 26 November 1963, at the age of 81...

Galli-Curci was a popular recording artist and her voice can still be heard on original 78-rpm records and their LP and CD reissues. Based on her recorded legacy and contemporary assessments of Galli-Curci's performances in England and America, the opera commentator Michael Scott, writing in Volume Two of The Record of Singing (Duckworth, London, 1979), compares her unfavourably as a vocal technician with coloratura sopranos of an earlier generation, such as Nellie Melba and Luisa Tetrazzini, but he acknowledges the unique beauty of her voice and the ongoing lyrical appeal of her charming singing...


I transferred this side from a laminated Australian pressing of HMV DA 1095.