23 Facts About Amelita Galli-Curci

Amelita Galli-Curci was an Italian lyric coloratura soprano.

Amelita Galli-Curci was one of the most famous operatic singers of the 20th century and a popular recording artist, with her records selling in large numbers.

Amelita Galli-Curci 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, and at the age of 16 was offered a professorship.

Amelita Galli-Curci 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.

Amelita 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.

Amelita Galli-Curci was seen by many critics as an antidote to the host of squally, verismo-oriented sopranos then populating Italian opera houses.

Amelita Galli-Curci toured widely in Europe, Russia and South America.

Amelita Galli-Curci toured extensively throughout her career, including a 1924 Great Britain concert tour, where she appeared in 20 cities and a tour of Australia a year later.

Amelita Galli-Curci first arrived in the United States in the autumn of 1916 as a virtual unknown.

Amelita Galli-Curci's 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 on 18 November 1916 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, Amelita Galli-Curci signed a recording contract with the Victor Talking Machine Company and made her first records a few weeks before her American debut.

On 14 November 1921, while still under contract with the Chicago Opera, Amelita Galli-Curci made her debut at the Metropolitan Opera in New York as Violetta in La Traviata, opposite tenor Beniamino Gigli as Alfredo.

Amelita Galli-Curci was one of the few singers of that era who were contracted to both opera companies simultaneously.

Amelita Galli-Curci remained at the Met until her retirement from the operatic stage nine years later.

In 1922, Amelita Galli-Curci built a country estate in Highmount, New York, which she called "Sul Monte".

Amelita Galli-Curci summered there for several years until she sold the property in 1937.

Amelita Galli-Curci returned the favor by performing there on its opening night.

Weary of opera house politics and convinced that opera was a dying art form, Amelita Galli-Curci retired from the operatic stage in January, 1930 to concentrate instead on concert performances.

In 1908, Amelita Galli-Curci Galli wed an Italian nobleman and painter, the Marchese Luigi Curci, attaching his surname to hers.

Amelita Galli-Curci was a student of the Indian meditation and yoga teacher Paramahansa Yogananda.

Amelita Galli-Curci wrote the foreword to Yogananda's 1929 book Whispers from Eternity.

Amelita Galli-Curci spent much of her time painting and taught singing privately until shortly before her death from emphysema in La Jolla, California, on 26 November 1963, at the age of 81.

Amelita Galli-Curci is honored on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for recording, with a star located at 6121 Hollywood Boulevard.