The voice and charm of soprano Amelita Galli-Curci inspired rapturous reviews throughout most of her career. “How imaginatively vivacious in the first act; how pathetic in the second; how tragic in the last. … No other role reveals her own peculiar powers … to greater advantage; none permits her to disclose more affectingly … the essentially feminine charm of her persuasions,” Max Smith, of The New York American, exulted.
Galli-Curci’s 1921 Metropolitan Opera debut as Violetta in Giuseppe Verdi’s “La Traviata” brought forth this flowery flood of adoration. Smith continued, “Carefully at times, almost gingerly, she spun out filaments of resonant silver. She held the audience in the hollow of her pretty hand, and before the final curtain, ... had won a complete triumph.”
For an earlier performance of the same role, a Reading Times critic from Reading, Pennsylvania, wrote, “It is evident that her beautiful soprano voice, which goes up among the stars and stays there with perfect unconcern, is further aided by the singer’s agreeable personality and charming appearance.”
Milanese-born coloratura soprano Amelita Galli-Curci. Public Domain
Unfortunately, although remembered for her exquisite coloratura singing and charismatic acting, Amelita Galli-Curci is almost equally remembered for a 1935 thyroid surgery, when she was 42, that went wrong. The singer began noticing vocal difficulties in her late 20s, but continued singing “around” the problem until she couldn’t anymore.
The thyroid cartilage basically wraps around the larynx, and, as this was a relatively new procedure at the time, it was a risky enterprise for a singer. The “nerve of Galli-Curci,” as it became known, refers to the external branch of the superior laryngeal nerve (SLN) that likely was injured during a thyroidectomy to remove a thyroid goiter.
A journal published with the National Library of Medicine states, “Amelita Galli-Curci suffered SLN injury during thyroid surgery with distressing consequences.” SLN, it continued, “has sometimes been described as the ‘neglected’ nerve in thyroid surgery, although injury to this nerve can cause significant disability.” The article observed, “Symptoms may include … vocal fatigue or diminished vocal frequency range, especially when rising pitch.”
There is no question Galli-Curci was aware this surgery was an important, new procedure as she engaged an anatomical artist to be in attendance and sketch “various phases of the operation for future study,” according to a 1935 Special to the New York Times article “Galli-Curci Sings to Test Her Voice During Operation to Remove Goitre”: “Afterward, she sang short vocal exercises and said she was completely satisfied that the voice had come through ‘unharmed.’”
The surgery took an hour and ten minutes. Dr. Arnold H. Kegel, who performed the operation, was confident it was successful as he had removed the growth that had “pushed the windpipe to the left an inch and three quarters, and the larynx 15 degrees from the vertical.”
In a 2024 article published on the ENT & Audiology News, ENT Trainee Ruby Sekhon casts doubt that the surgery was at fault, stating, “Little is known of the technique that was employed to perform Galli-Curci’s thyroidectomy to confidently claim this as the primary culprit.”
But Galli-Curci knew. In a 1963 radio interview shortly before her death, the singer said she began painting “when I couldn’t sing anymore because of that operation I had.” The interview is now on YouTube.
Before this sad event, Galli-Curci was considered one of the greatest coloraturas of her time. “The lyric element in the art of Galli-Curci is her bravest asset. She sang with a lark like freedom last night that floated the sensitive listener on the ‘wings of song,’ and every now and then she let go and we tumbled earthward,” said a 1919 New York Times review by James Gibbons Huneker, apparently as enthralled as the others.
In addition to her numerous highly acclaimed opera and concert performances in Italy, South America, Egypt, Russia and Spain, she made the first of 125 recordings in 1916. “Her ‘Caro Nome’ from ‘Rigoletto,’ recorded about 1919, is considered one of the greatest operatic recordings ever made,” per the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Amelita Galli was born into a musical family in Milan, Italy in 1882 with an opera-singer grandmother and a piano-playing father. She started piano lessons at the age of 5, and, later, studied piano at the Royal Conservatory of Milan, where she won first prize in piano. However, a family friend, composer Pietro Mascagni, encouraged her to switch instruments one day while visiting the Galli home.
When Mascagni heard her sing he said, “Why in the world have you been wasting your time with piano playing when you have a natural voice like that? Such voices are born. Start to work at once to develop your voice,” Galli-Curci wrote in an essay for “Great Singers on the Art of Singing” by James Francis Cooke.
Amelita Galli-Curci typing in a fur coat, circa 1920. Public Domain
She recalled her early education in a 1924 interview for Etude Magazine. “I heard practically all of the notable operatic performances at La Scala until I was seventeen. At first I practiced piano about one and a half hours a day, eventually practicing three hours a day.” Galli-Curci learned many major piano works and, in addition to playing concerts, taught piano lessons for four years. “This experience, as well as that of having the guidance of musical parents, was of incalcuable (sic) value to me,” she recalled.
Galli-Curci’s singing was mostly self-taught. She sang piano exercises to increase her vocal agility, range, and breathing technique. When she thought she was ready, “with a copy of ‘Rigoletto’ under [her] arm … made [her] way for the Teatro Constanzi, the leading opera house of Rome,” she recalled. She was hired for one performance of Verdi’s “Rigoletto,” but the audience’s great enthusiasm obliged her to sing “Caro Nome” again as an encore. And that was the beginning of her brilliant career.
She toured South America for two years, and then came her Chicago opera debut in “Rigoletto.” “The applause astounded me; it was electric, like a thunderstorm. No one was more astonished than I. Engagements and offers came from everywhere,” Galli-Curci described the events of that night.
It was a Saturday matinee on Nov. 18, 1916, her 34th birthday. She received a 15-minute standing ovation. “Her recording of ‘Caro Nome’ sold more than 10,000 copies in Chicago at a price of $6 a record; a huge amount for that time,” states Julie S. Halpern in a 2004 article “The Diva Vanishes” on the Classical Singer Magazine.
Galli-Curci’s opera roles included Giacomo Meyerbeer’s “Dinorah,” Giacomo Puccini’s “Madama Butterfly,” Richard Strauss’s “Der Rosenkavalier,” Léo Delibes’s “Lakmé,” Charles Gounod’s “Romeo and Juliet,” and Gaetano Donizetti’s “Lucia di Lammermoor.” Her final Metropolitan Opera performance as Rosina in Gioachino Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” concluded a Met opera career that spanned from 1920 to 1930. She continued singing a full schedule of concert appearances until her full retirement in 1937.
Amelita Galli-Curci with her pianist-husband Homer Samuels. Public Domain
She was married first to Luigi Curci, Marchese of Simeri, and later to her accompanist, Homer Samuels, thus becoming an American citizen. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her recordings in 1960. Her rendition of “Home Sweet Home” can be heard at the end of Studio Ghibli’s film, “Grave of the Fireflies.” She died in La Jolla, California on Nov. 26, 1963.
“She is nearly perfect as it is humanly possible to be,” said American soprano Geraldine Farrar, who attended Galli-Curci’s 1916 American debut in Chicago and became her friend for life.
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Helena Elling
Author
Helena Elling is a singer and freelance writer living in Scottsdale, Arizona.
