Amelita Galli-Curci

Amelita Galli-Curci (born Nov. 18, 1882, Milan, Italy—died Nov. 26, 1963, La Jolla, Calif., U.S.) was an Italian-born American singer, one of the outstanding operatic sopranos of her time.

Amelita Galli studied piano and composition at the Royal Conservatory of Milan, from which she graduated in 1903. As a singer she was entirely self-taught. She made her operatic debut as Gilda in Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto in Trani, Italy, in 1909 and later in the year appeared in Rome in Georges Bizet’s Don Procopio. Over the next several years she toured Egypt, Russia, Spain, and South America with various opera companies. In 1910 she married Luigi Curci, Marchese of Simeri, and she used the name Galli-Curci thereafter.

Her American debut occurred in Chicago in November 1916, when she appeared in Rigoletto at the Auditorium Theatre to great acclaim. She remained with the Chicago Opera Association until 1921, making her New York City debut in the title role of Giacomo Meyerbeer’s Dinorah in January 1918. In November 1920 she first appeared at the Metropolitan Opera of New York, in La traviata. Having divorced her first husband, she married her accompanist, Homer Samuels, in 1921, thereby becoming an American citizen.

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From 1921 to 1930 Galli-Curci sang regularly with the Met. Among her most acclaimed roles were those in Madama Butterfly, Der Rosenkavalier, Lakmé, Roméo et Juliette, Lucia di Lammermoor, and I puritani. She possessed a florid coloratura soprano of unsurpassed beauty, and she was a popular recording artist; her "Caro nome" from Rigoletto, recorded about 1919, is considered one of the greatest operatic recordings ever made. Her last performance at the Met was in Il barbiere di Siviglia in January 1930. Until her retirement in 1937, she maintained a heavy schedule of concert appearances.

(Click here to hear Galli-Curci singing “Sempre libera degg’io” from Guiseppe Verdi’s La traviata.)