New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1919-02-09

''scored another genuine success. Her
velvety, clear soprano came forth with
the same enhancing purity of tone which
took New York by storm year ago."
while The Evening Mail" found her
singing "Donizetti's made-for-prima-
donnas music with that delicious naIvete
that makes her most difficult vocal feats
sound happy and beautifully simple
That glorious smooth legato has grown
even more liquid, and her high notes
purled and rippled with joyous freedom.
She has a very winning smile, too, and
because of something appealingly fragile
in her small figure"
Referring again to "The Evening
Sum-" one learns that
cher top note, off stage, at the end Of
the first act, had the real delicacy of
other we'll remembered Galli-Curci ton
notes. When the famous mad
scene arrived IN the second act she sang
with flute obbligato evidently in
terpolated. Here was her tour de force,
and the audience knew it and went wild
in something of last seasons fashion And
Nine. CALI Curci, as charming and appeal
ing as ever in her stage business and ap-
pearance, came many smiling times before
the curtain"
What a sweet voice." exclailns Mr.
Huneker, land what an engaging per-
sonality are Gall-Curci'si Musical from
her forehead to her instep, she delights
her auditory with her unaffected pathos
and larklike facility"
And yet (for as was said moment
ago, the triumph cannot be called a
| complete one) there seemed about the
evening a haunting sense of disappoint
ment. H. E. Krehbiel, writing in The
Tribune, declared:
In scene after scene she maintained a
painfully fat ntonaton and compelled
recognition of the fact that neither her
voice nor her art both admirable was i'm
peccable. She had tremendous houseful
of people ready to fall down and worship
the image that had been set up year ago.
but upon them her singing fell much like a
wet blanket
I'VE will have nothing to do with the
81
that to the vocal pedagogues. Is it natu-
rally defective ear? Unfortunate training
IN the of her breath? Construction Of
her vocal organs? We do not know. Some
of the charm of her beautiful voice was also
gone and with it some of that quaint almost
medieval atmosphere which surrounded her
personality when she acted Lucia when we
saw it last year.
Doubts and perpleXities were pictured in
the faces of the knowing all over the house
But when under the influence of her dra-
matte fathers maledicton the mind of Linda
was tuned awry the sweet bells that had
tangled out of tune recovered their old
loneliness and disappointment gave way to
delight"
Pitts Sanborn, in THE Globe" pro-
nounced the singer rot brilliant yester-
day and continued:
perhaps nervousness perhaps fatigue.
perhaps BOTH robbed her voice in the first
act of richness and color % luce di quest
ANNA she sang faulty and in cramped
manner. Throughout the act her intonation
went wandering. In few phrases, after
Linda goes mad in the second act. Mrs
Galli-Curci showed the real possibilities of
her in Oualitv and recopo,ca p,+
much OF the music in that act, for all its
forldity, proved too dramatic in accent and
too heavy for her. fight of coloratura
just before the curtain (not particularly
well done, by the way saved the day for
the soprano with the audience, which gave
her the one thunderous outburst it had for
her the evening through"
10 Reginald de Koven, critic for
The Herald" the trouble seemed main
ly that, although she played with eff
feet and sincerity" as whole there
was not enough of the striking and
spectacular vocal effect that the audience
came to hear to make the disinterment
of so much operate antiquity really
plausible or worth whle'
Mr.. Finck believes that in the style of
staccato fioriture which carried the
audience by Storm" Galli-Curci is zone
of the vocal wonders of the age" But
he also believes that she does not be-
long in the first rank of operate So
pranos, the rank of Patti and Sembrish.'
Not only, he says
"does she too often deviate from the pitca
which mars any singing, however goo.
otherwise, but her tril and general
technique uneven, and the quality of
her voice in legato, is not so lovely as