Death and Legacy
On 24 November 1936, Galli-Curci, aged 54, made an ill-advised return to opera, appearing as Mimi in La bohème in Chicago. It was painfully clear that her singing days were over and after a few more recitals she went into complete retirement, living in California. She began teaching singing privately until shortly before her death from emphysema on 26 November 1963, at the age of 81. Among her students was soprano Jean Fenn.
Galli-Curci's voice can still be heard on 78-rpm recordings and their LP and CD reissues. Based on her recorded legacy and contemporary assessments of Galli-Curci's performances in England and America, the opera commentator Michael Scott, writing in Volume Two of The Record of Singing (Duckworth, London, 1979), compares her unfavourably as a vocal technician with coloratura sopranos of an earlier generation, such as Nellie Melba and Luisa Tetrazzini, but he acknowledges the beauty of her voice and the ongoing lyrical appeal of her charming singing.
Her country estate near Fleischmanns, New York, where she resided from 1922 to 1937, known as Sul Monte, was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2010.
Read more about this topic: Amelita Galli-Curci
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