In the 70s and '80s two, then elderly, ladies were frequent habituees of the London opera lovers scene. They had been ardent vocal fans all their lives, and in their youths had heard many of the great singers whose names have now passed into legend. When a recording of Amelita Galli-Curci was played one of them would frequently cry 'Cut tire treble!'. One instinctively knew why. '1 'o her ears modern electrical reproduction altered the vocal quality as she recalled it. It rave am edge to the voice which was not there in person. 1 her mind's ear recalled it as surely and clearly "is if it were yesterday. It had left an indelible impression from frequent trips in America, when she heard the soprano in opera and concert. It had no trace of am edginess or patina of harshness Its sound Was delicate, silky-smooth. It enveloped the listener in a velvety blanket of glowing tone. Such a travesty of that sound would simply not do: it was just not Amelita Galli-Curci. What was the appeal of Amelita Galli-Curci? How was it that her records sold in their thousands in the United States, for example, making her name a household word before she had even oracle her debut there? The voice was very different from many of her contemporaries'. It did not boast the diamond-like, coloratura pyrotechnics of Tetrazzini's; it was diametrically opposite to the icy-cold tone of Melba's (at least as recorded); it lacked the brilliant, razor-edge of Dal Monte's. In many respects GalliCurci's was not an Italianate tone. Rather, its sound was more I Hispanic. Its timbre was more akin to the voices of the Spanish sopranos Pareto, Barricntos and Bori. Indeed. at first Fearing Pareto's recordings can frequently be mistaken for GalliCurci's. Galli-Curci was active at a time when there were so many more strikingly endowed contemporaries. But she held one trump card that gave her an equal footing: the voice was remarkable for the sheer, intrinsic beauty of tone. She built on that foundation with her skill in fioriture, pin-point staccali, a beautiful legato, and perfused the whole with a charm and a delicacy of delivery. The result was a persona that was touching, somehow more affecting, more human. The listener responded accordingly. Biographical details of the singer are by now so well known as to be superfluous. Rather let us dwell on her recorded legacy. It was undoubtedly one of the most `phonogenic' voices. Like Alma Gluck's before her, the voice was ideally suited to the gramophone. Her recorded legacy can be divided neatly into two periods: acoustics and electrics. I ler acoustic recordings are generally considered to be the best. Here the voice is incontrovertibly at its loveliest, and these are the ones which collectors prize above all. Yet, electrical recording, with its greater frequency response, opened out further that intrinsic beauty of sound in the GalliCurci voice which the constricted acoustic process denied us. Though, by this time, there is the occasional looseness of vibration, and the trill, never her piece de resistance, is frequently flat, there is still so much to enjoy. Somehow it seems churlish to dwell on the weaknesses in the face of so many strengths. In many ways, the Galli-Curci voice was at its best not when vying with the flute for supremacy in florid music, but in the simpler, less intricate melody. The lovely tonal quality and legato that run through her `Chanson Hindoue' is illustrative of the best of her electrical recordings. It is at once both exquisitely fragile yet secure, the frequent downward descents acceding to a row of Gs of surprising strength. What delicacy she brings to the rarely recorded Scarlatti cantata! Such music calls for the lightest of touch, yet requires the surest of technique. In duet the delicate flower of Galli-Curci's tone demanded the most considerate of partners. It is no surprise that Victor's star tenor and haritone, Schipa and De Luca, were rapidly pressed into service, resulting in ducts which were all-time best sellers during many years in the catalogue. The partnership with Schipa, in particular, was reminiscent of the glory days of several Chicago seasons together. And how beautifully their voices intertwine in a musical symbiosis of porlamenti and harmony in the Don Pasguale aria. Schipa, Galli-Curci and De Luca were all masters of the quality the Italians call morbidezza. a tender, loving shaping of the music to convey the deepest of human emotion. The Rigoletto duets with the softgrained, compassionate haritone of De Luca explain why GalliCurci's Gilda was one of her most famous roles, for the voice inherently possessed the virginal innocence and fragility of the hapless daughter. We should not undervalue her skill in coloratura. It was never quite as sure of foot as her elder colleague Tetrazzini's, nor was it so practice-perfect that it could ever he flaunted for its own sake, as perhaps was sometimes the case for others. Here lay both Galli-Curci's strengths and weaknesses: in the arias from L'Etoile du Nord and Dinorab her slaccati are second to none, all beautifully placed in the mask and hit squarely in wne. In rapid fioriture the fleetest of notes were never blurred, never fudged. However, she never really learned the trill. The two notes were always distinctly there, but her trill was characterised by a looseness which could not match the tightly-knit miracle of Melba's or Patti's. Its placement was not perfect, and its production would exert a downward pressure on the support, causing a flattening of the tone. This is occasionally found in her acoustics, but in almost all her electric discs the trill droops off centre, sometimes alarmingly so. No matter how smitten we are by so much that is overwhelmingly positive, there is Surely prudence in maintaining a certain objectivity. Much has been made of a goitre from which She Suffered for fifteen years. This could not have helped her singing, and may have contributed to some of the problems touched on here, but even notices early in her career indicated her less than perfect intonation on occasion. Little that is human can ever he perfect. Frailty can, in itself, become an endearing quality. There is no doubt that GalliCurci was not a perfect singer, but her appeal transcended her shortcomings. She was never an artist on a pedestal, untouchable. She spoke directly to the puhlic, a gift of only the greatest artists, and the public always forgives the artist it has taken into its heart. Perhaps the last word should belong to the Chicago music critic Herman Devries. Of her Chicago Opera debut as Gilda on 18 November 1916, he wrote: in thirty years, I, veteran operagoer, have never heard Such matchless, flawless beauty of tone, so satiny a timbre, such delicately lovely phrasing, Such innate God-given talent and feeling for the true bel-canto. JOHIN WILLIAMS