Books › Selected directory of the Italians in Chicago : market guide and yearly information bulletin …, 1933 › scan 28
Scan 28
Selected directory of the Italians in Chicago : market guide and yearly information bulletin …, 1933
22 lines. Read by computer on 3 September 2026. Printed page 12. See the scan on archive.org.
1His interest in music was always keen and he never neglected an opportunity to perfect himself.
3From 1917 to 1919 he played in the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra; in 1920 he belonged to the Chicago Civic Opera and in 1921 he began his career over the air.
5He was Concert Master then at the Riviera Theatre and his concerts were among the very first to be broadcast. When the Uptown Theatre opened, he was engaged as Concert Master, the orchestra being broadcast over Station W.E.B.H. In 1925 Mr. Dewey of the Edgewater Beach Hotel, heard him and invited him to organize the original Edgewater Beach Hotel Orchestra. He was heard and admired over the air and in 1927, he passed to the Stevens Hotel, and conducted the concert orchestra there. The Stevens Hotel broadcast through Station W. M. A. Q. and when this station decided to put on the air an orchestra of its own, the choice fell upon Joseph Galicchio. This is the modern story of the Italian, who made good over the air.
7He started with seven men and now has over twenty. His music is necessarily often popular music, but he tries to preserve the highest standard, whether selections are popular or classical.
9I give the story of CLAUDIA MUZIO as accurately as she told it to me in January 1932.
11She was born in Italy and was taken to London at two, when her father was appointed Assistant Stage Manager at Convent Garden. She began to sing when she began to talk, trilling merrily when other children still ignore the existence of song. She was put in an English boarding school and when her parents took her out for the day, her desire was always to go back stage at Convent Garden and hear the opera sung.
13Her father discouraged her desire to become a singer herself. In fact, he had her voice tested by one of the most prominent singing teachers in London, who said: "Dont let this child think she can be a singer. She will never have more voice than a kitten."
15This did not discourage Claudia Muzio, who continued to sing for herself and when in her early teens, her parents placed her in boarding school at Turin, she pursued with passionate ardor her musical studies, though she was not permitted to have any instruction in vocal music.
17When her school course was completed, she was one summer the guest of a very distinguished Italian woman, who impressed with the earnestness of her desire to become a singer, had her sing for a blind old singing teacher, who in her time had trained some of the greatest operatic stars. This woman told Claudia Muzio that she needed practice, so that her voice might be strengthened, but that she placed her voice perfectly in a most natural way, and advised her to continue her studies by herself as she had done until then. Her father heard her, relented, and told her that he would give her a chance to make her debut in Massenet's "Manon." He gave her two weeks to prepare her score. She was received at once with enthusiasm.
19Claudia Muzio also excelled in the harp, piano and especially in dramatic technique. She made her American debut at the Metropolitan in 1916. Joined the Chicago Civic Opera Company and has been with it ever since, except for one season, 1928-1929. She has sung in most of the great opera houses of Europe and South America. It is superfluous to speak of the enormous success she had in her concerts.
21The charm which Madam Muzio has for the public in her magnificent stage setting is not diminished at all when she is met in the simplicity of her own environment. The career of a great artist involves continued application and hard work, but Claudia Muzio remains a humming bird, brilliant and fairylike in an invisible harness.
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