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Musical Courier 1923-10-04: Vol 87 Iss 14, 1923
88 lines. Read by computer on 29 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1AT SUL MONTE
2THE COUNTRY HOME OF MME. GALLI-CURCI
4By
5WILLIAM ARMSTRONG
7A STONE country house in rambling, old English style, set on a mountaintop commanding broad expanse of view; trees, flowers, and a vast space of arching blue give impressionistic outline of Mme. Galli-Curci's home, Sul Monte, on Belle Ayre in the Catskills. Individuality is conveyed in a first glimpse of the place, but it is within doors that full sense of that individuality completely dawns.
9Sul Monte is not the home of a writer, for there is lacking the disorder of dust-gathering papers and piled-up reference books which must not be touched, though crowded bookshelves reaching to the ceiling at one end of the living-room proclaim a literary taste; it is not the abiding place of a painter, for scattered canvases, and litter of paint-tubes and easels are missing, although evidence of art is everywhere, art held in abeyance to carefully-planned scheme. Nor is it the home of a prima donna, for, barring a marble bust of Mme. Galli-Curci and a concert grand in the great music-room, there is no reminder of the singing life. Instead, it is the real home of one who loves books, the plastic arts, and music, one to whom as she herself puts it, "singing is not the sole thing in life. It has to be clothed in all the arts; music reflects the spirit, as well as being the vehicle of expression."
11When the World War came, half my life seemed to drop away from me. No longer was I able to wander about the face of Europe and see celebrities framed in the setting of their own homes. Self-expression had been narrowed down to words in strange surroundings. New York hotel-rooms conveyed no hint of the artists' innerseves, for there was no background, no assembling of the little things that total more of the individual than ever words convey.
13Mme. Patti in her castle, Craig-y-nos, proved herself to be of the great world, yet hedged about by a glamour placing her apart from all the rest; Paderewski in his villa, Rond-Bosson, with the moonlight streaming in through low French windows to mingle with uncertain flame of candles on a rose-decked dinner table, lived in an atmosphere of poetic mysticism. It had meant always the actors in a scene-setting of their own choosing, playing out a life drama which it illuminated.
15A REAL ATMOSPHERE.
17At Sul Monte I came once again into a genuine atmosphere; character was reflected in every detail of surroundings. The expected was generously missing. Not a single photograph of singer or composer; no illuminated testimonial, silver-lauzel wreath or any other signpost of prima donnadom. "I wanted something far away from my usual life," was Mme. Galli-Curci's answer to a comment on it. Music there was at Sul Monte, but it sprang spontaneously; visual reminder was of the other arts.
19At night we sometimes gravitated to the music-room. A little flight of steps leads into its spaciousness. Two stories high, the open, pointed roof is of oak with solid oak beams crossing it. At one end of the room, panelling of the same wood rises to half the total height. Chandeliers, severe in design, flood the central space with light, leaving shadowy corners, in one of which Allan Clark's bust of Mme. Galli-Curci stands out from the dark in ghostly whiteness; a bust in which the artist has caught a singular majesty and sense of elevation, as of a soul visible and singing.
21At the lower end of the apartment, standing against deep windows with little leaded panes, are two tall bronze figures by the same sculptor, a dancing nymph and a faun, outlined against the background of the night beyond. "There are deep sofas, and old English chairs, upright, severe in sweep of line. A Spanish-embroidered shawl makes touch of vivid color on the grand piano; a few paintings show dimly against hand-plastered walls, colored in a way that gives to high lights subdued, irridescent tones. Between the low windows holding bronzes is a big fireplace, a carved beam, flush with the wall, crossing it.
23It was in these surroundings, new, yet made by art to resemble age, that Mme. Galli-Curci sang, with her husband, Homer Samuels, at the piano. Before that, at her wish, he had played the result of his summer's work. In quite other vein from any music he has done hitherto, its humor, and the gaiety of its abandon made a prologue fanciful of rhythm, to more serious things that followed.
25First there was Juliette; then Manon, after that Lucia, succeeded by Lakme; the singer's warm, fresh voice conjuring up each in turn as their music floated out into that old-world room and on a supreme silence.
27Something Van Dyck, now dead, told long ago sprang to mind. "The Empress Elizabeth of Austria had sent for him after a Parsifal performance at Bayreuth. Her first words were of the joy of hearing music without the disturbing sense of many listeners intent on each other's clothes instead of on the stage. That same train of thought she took up later with him, following a court concert at the Hofburg, when she exclaimed impatiently, 'This is no place for music, a something too intimate, too sacred, except to be heard in silence and alone.'"
29At night at Sul Monte music brings another benediction than listening in supreme silence, and that is sense of complete isolation. The world appears to have vanished, leaving one on heights so far removed from it that visual knowledge of its existence must await the upspringing day. In a great city, the mystery of night becomes no longer mystery, harassed by horns of taxicabs and with a sky flaunting soap advertisements in electric light by way of stars.
31At Sul Monte, with music still in my heart, I could look out on the silent music that God created when He made the world, valley on valley between ranges and filled to the brim with pallid mist; above, a radiant sky hung with a moon that flooded all the vast expanse with light. Only the wind moved, leaving a vitalized coolness that brought back Galli-Curci's words, "Give me the mountains. There I face God Almighty and plunge my soul into the fresh air." Not alone spiritually, but physically is that plunge possible, in a life-giving air at such high altitude that trees and flowers, instead of scattering languid scent as on lazier breezes, keep it to themselves as some inviolable secret.
33A MODERN JOSHUA.
35At Sul Monte there is, as I discovered, one trace but only one, of prima donnadom. A bell is hung against the wall outside in old farmhouse fashion. Punctually and on the hour of breakfast-time it is supposed to ring, but if the singer is a little less prompt than the sun, that bell remains mute. When she does appear it at once sets up a clanging. By subtle flattery she and it invariably agree. Giovanni, the butler, invisible yet all-seeing, works the miracle of putting back the sun.
37There is an agility in Madame Galli-Curci's mind that corresponds with her agility of voice. Always she seems to catch the word that will best express her. And sometimes that apt word is slang. An interviewer once said of such colloquial lapses, that they sounded like hearing a child swear. He was right. But she loses nothing of forcefulness by the indulgence. After repeating an inane discourse to which she had to listen, her abrupt comment was, "That gets my goat."
39In motoring down the rocky road from Sul Monte to the valley, she bounced from the seat into the air and came back with a thud. "I'm with you," she called cheerily to her husband who was driving.
41"One night," as she described it, "when I came out to sing, I spied a man in an end seat, the picture of abject misery. No doubt his wife had brought him there against his will. At that I began to sing to him, watching results." These she gave in pantomime; silent fury, reluctant attention, as if it weren't quite so bad; growing interest, with a dropped jaw, and finally a beaming face. At the concert's close the man and his wife went to thank her.
43"You didn't want to come tonight, I saw you," she returned.
45"Saw me?" he asked blankly, guilty conscience showing in his face.
47"Yes," she retorted frankly, adding with an equal frankness, "but I caught you."
49First thing after breakfast at Sul Monte comes a visit to the garden to see what flowers have opened in the night, and how much farther up the vines have crept since the day before. "Our party is an allegory," I said as we tramped. "You, a born Italian, stand for Columbus who discovered us; Berenguer, here, your Spanish flutist, is the land that gave the ships; Samuels and I are the natives."
51"The discoverers and the discovered," she shot back.
53Made happy by her words, "Smoke anywhere, it all goes up the chimney," words which Samuels had doubtless heard before, we smoked in the living-room while she did her usual half hour of vocalises. Then we joined her in the music-room and there came a solid hour of singing; during my stay this was lengthened an hour more. Not alone the arias were sung, but her part in duets, and, sometimes, in full ensembles—Romeo and Juliette, Lakme, Dimorah, Lucia, Traviata, Trovatore, Manon, Rosina, The Queen in Coq d'Or; songs by Liszt, by Hugo Wolf, whom she deems the greatest song composer of them all; old American songs in the vernacular, even one night at dusk Abide With Me, to the old hymn tune with all its simple faith.
55Dressed in a little gingham frock, she would begin quite still in pose, then, as fervor grew, paced to and fro, gesticulating to the rhythm of the music, never stopping for easier flow of breath in cadenzas that were flung out audaciously, and touched high notes which did not seem high notes at all, because of spontaneity and warmth, though they were C, D, E in alt.
57AT WORK ON COQ D'OR.
59And this curious knowledge was impressed on me; than the music of Coq d'Or, for any soprano to whom its difficult tessitura comes with ease, there is nothing better for the voice. Half an hour it takes to sing; as arduous half hour as is made by any music written. And after that! The warmth, the color, the volume of the voice are surprisingly increased.
61As I heard Madame Galli-Curci sing it, not once, but daily, there is nothing that more completely fits her voice—a weird, laughing satire, whose spirit she has absolutely caught, and whose hellish intervals sprang as if they had found root in her own invention. It became not a feat of dexterity, but an ebullition that was irrepressible.
63The wonder was to me with all that alternate singing of coloratura and lyric rôles, as minutes ticked to hours, that Galli-Curci's tones remained fresh. And why? To let her answer, "My work refreshes me. Art is no work. Consciousness of effort is fatal to art from the point of view of the listener. Respect what God Almighty gave. Put in no artificial interference. Keep it as near to nature as possible."
65For one hour daily of that singing, Franz Proschowsky, he who wrote The Way To Sing, and of whom Madame Galli-Curci said, "He is well worth consulting," was with her in her music room. To me it was almost like meeting an own brother, when I saw him after a lapse of twenty-five years. It brought back, too, the days of Nordica and of other golden voices I had loved.
67Our meeting then had been at the studio of Proschowsky's teacher, where I had been asked to hear him sing, during my years as music critic on The Chicago Tribune. My first words, which came near to getting me put out, were, "He is not a baritone, but a tenor." And they had given him to sing, It Is Enough, from Mendelssohn's Elijah. When Nordica next visited Chicago, I asked leave to bring a "baritone" to sing to her, not repeating my own verdict. After hearing him through four bars, she turned and said, "Your 'baritone' is a tenor." After that, during each stay there, Proschowsky came to her as pupil. His talent and intelligence caught her interest fully.
69Years grew, he studied in Paris and in Italy, settling permanently in Berlin and meeting with success. From there he emerged after the war's close, returning to America, in reality his home, though his father was a Pole, his mother Danish. And so, after twenty-five years, I again met him, in Galli-Curci's doorway, bringing her a basket of green corn.
71One morning Berenguer happily went late to practice in his studio, which is the woods, where birds answer his flute cadenzas. Samuels and I, as usual, were smoking. "My wife," he explained, "has gone to see about fitting on a dress."
73A NEW COSTUME.
75It fitted well. I saw that myself almost as he spoke, and Madame Galli-Curci came down the stairs into that old-fashioned room of which she made part of the picture in her Manon costume for the Sulpice scene, a dress of some rich colored stuff brocaded in gold, big-hooped, festooned with sprays of roses.
77"Wait!" called Berenguer excitedly, catching up his camera and running out into the sunshine.
79She followed, opening wider the heavy door to peer at him, smiling.
81"Stop just where you are," he called again, and in that instant caught a picture of which I needed no copy to hold it well in memory.
83Searching through magazines for the exact type of house they wished to live in, Madame Galli-Curci and Samuels preferred those planned by Lindenberg. So Lindenberg became Sul Monte's architect. Perhaps none other could have planned it quite so well, for he prefers the old and genuine, and loathes precision. Therefore no two leaded panes that let in tempered light through cathedral glass are exactly alike; not a nail is used, even heavy oak beams are pegged, as in old English houses that meet undisturbed the circling centuries; a rich red brick, to give touch of warmth to gray stone walls, is set in here and there; ornament is confined to an occasional carved beam or a monk's head set at the apex of a gable; flat-surfaced oak doors show only nature's veining; limestone, artificially treated to simulate age, frames the casements. Everywhere there is an air of restfulness, of age, of a house made to live in, and that, despite its newness, has been lived in long. Of its artistic, genuine effect, Galli-Curci said, "I did not want a home that smote one with the thought of cost or flaunted the fact that a prima donna lived there."
85The furnishings must have required a deal of time, and endless thought and study, for they merge with their setting. Old English furniture is mainly used, with an occasional Belgian or Mary Tudor piece, reproduced from casts made of the originals at the Kensington Museum. The stuffs for upholstering are English, of old designs; heavy, deep red Italian damask curtains hang at the great windows in the music-room; the big rug is Spanish of a hand-woven kind. These two last were chosen with an aim. "Not all the halls I sing in," explained Galli-Curci, "have perfect acoustics as has this room. So I purposely made it harder to sing in, with rugs and hangings, that I might not be spoiled."
87At the back of the house is a big porch; its three open sides, with oak pillars and beams as massive as any Norway boasts, frame as many varying views of mountain landscape. Sometimes the vast picture is sun-flooded; again, cloud patches dot it with moving shadows, leaving only the farthest stretches in unbroken, yellow light. A foreground
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