8 minute read
One Way to Name a Theater
By T.M. Bradshaw
In 1922, Clarke Sanford, publisher and editor of the Catskill Mountain News, was having a theater built in Margaretville. The sand for the foundation was not delivered when expected, so Sanford went to the source to find out what was causing the delay. He found three trucks there being loaded, but their cargo was not intended for Sanford’s construction site, it was for the site where the lyric coloratura soprano Amelita Galli-Curci was having a house built. In a “turn lemons into lemonade” moment, Sanford decided that he had found a good name for his theater.
Estelle Liebling, herself a soprano of national reputation, a vocal coach/voice teacher of 78 principal singers of the Metropolitan Opera, including Galli-Curci, and a part-time Margaretville resident, arranged a meeting for Sanford with Galli-Curci. She gave permission to use her name for the theater, graciously suggesting that things should be reversed, that the honor and privilege was hers. She also agreed to attend the theater’s opening.
The program for the opening night featured Liebling, who planned to give a recital similar to those she had presented in New York, Detroit, St. Louis, and other large cities around the country.
The likelihood of two opera stars of their caliber performing in Margaretville led to some people making bets that Sanford was bluffing to fill his new theater. But his 500-seat theater was full and both singers performed.
According to the September 1, 1922 Catskill Mountain News, after Liebling’s performance, the emcee for the evening, the Hon. Lincoln R. Long of New Kingston, began describing for the audience their new neighbor, referring to her as wholesome and genuine, but before he could pronounce her name the audience began to shout “Galli-Curci, Galli-Curci, Galli-Curci.” She rose from her seat and went to the stage, declared that the occasion suggested she should make a speech, but that she was a poor speaker, so she sang several numbers instead, which, of course, was what the audience wanted. Her husband, Homer Samuels, was the accompanist for the evening.
Samuels was Galli-Curci’s second husband. She had married Luigi Curci in 1908 in Rome and was granted a divorce from him in January 1920 in Chicago. Her suit alleged “malevolence of character and disposition and violence practiced upon her person” and that he squandered and wrongfully appropriated her income “in ways that are devious, dark and unbecoming a gentleman of character.” Other people may have been involved, or perhaps accusations of adultery are just a convenient weapon in such situations—a Fleischmanns woman was named as correspondent in the divorce case and Curci filed a damage suit against Galli-Curci’s business manager, charging him with alienating her affections. Galli-Curci and Samuels married in 1921. Curci later petitioned the papal tribunal in Rome for an annulment.
When Galli-Curci first arrived in the Catskills sometime after the autumn of 1916, she spent her summers in Fleischmanns. The Delaware Republican of August 28, 1920 reported, “Madame Amelita Galli-Curci, of the Metropolitan Opera, arrived at her summer home at Highmount, last week.” And the Catskill Mountain News of June 18, 1921 noted that “Mme Galli-Curci, the most popular soprano singer in America, is quite often seen in Margaretville in her big Stutz automobile. She has rented a handsome summer home at Pine Hill and arrived a few days ago.”
When in 1922 she decided to have something built, the project that muscled in on Sanford’s sand, Harrie T. Lindeberg was the architect for the property, which has several buildings. The main house is two stories with multiple wings around a central courtyard.
Numerous newspaper references to Galli-Curci’s Catskills locations, both her initial rental and then the house she built, refer variously to Fleischmanns, Pine Hill, “on the slope of Belleayre Mountain,” and Highmount. John Duda of the Museum of Memories in Fleischmanns explained it this way: “Newspapers of the day would often use the name of a bigger or better known place in the same general vicinity. The best way to describe the location of her estate is on the hills heading out of Fleischmanns on the way to Highmount.”
Apparently, the residents themselves and the municipalities involved weren’t quite sure where her house was either. The estate later proved to be a tax question between Delaware and Ulster counties. On grievance day in August 1926, Homer Samuels appeared before the Board of Assessors in Margaretville, asking that the assessment on the property be lowered from $50,000 to $45,000. Then, the Catskill Mountain News of October 1, 1926 reported that Samuels had since also studied new maps from Washington and Albany and maintained that the property was actually several hundred feet east of the Delaware County line, causing Ulster County to undertake a survey. Most of the road to the estate is in Shandaken; if Samuels’ contention that the house was also there proved to be true, the article continued, then Ulster would be in a better financial position to maintain that road.
However, when Galli-Curci sold the house in 1937, a report in the Catskill Mountain News noted that the main house was just fifty feet inside the Delaware County line. Several other buildings on the estate—residences for staff and guests—had been intentionally built in Ulster County for lower taxes.
Galli-Curci’s American debut was on her 34th birthday, November 18, 1916, in Chicago, singing the part of Gilda in Rigoletto. She was with the Chicago Opera until 1924 and with the Metropolitan Opera from 1921 to 1930.
A medical issue later threatened Galli-Curci’s voice. In 1935, at Henrotin Hospital in Chicago, she underwent surgery to remove a thyroid goiter. There was a task critical to the surgery’s success that only she could perform, so the operation was conducted under local anesthesia. Several times the surgeons, Dr. Arnold Kegal and Dr. G. Raphael Dunlevy, paused in their work to ask Galli-Curci to sing. When it was over and Galli-Curci had been sedated, Dr. Kegal announced, “The voice of Galli-Curci has not been lost.” Dr. Kegal might have been overly optimistic; an inability to sing high pitches ended her career early. Researchers since disagree on the cause, some maintaining that a nerve to her larynx, now known as the “nerve of Galli-Curci,” was damaged surgically, others that compression from the goiter was the cause.
The Penn Phonograph Company of Philadelphia, known for manufacturing plaster “Nipper” dogs, the familiar RCA “His
Master’s Voice” terrier for music store dealership displays, also produced a line of a dozen half-height opera stars for window displays, including one of Galli-Curci.
While Galli-Curci thrilled audiences around the world, the Galli-Curci Theater brought the world to Margaretville. The April 26, 1929 issue of the Catskill Mountain News reported that the theater was being wired for sound on a thirty-day timeline and that contracts for the silent versions of a number of films were being converted to contracts for the sound versions. The article commented on the “up-to-date quality of the Margaretville pictures” noting that “the ‘Bridge of San Luis Rey’ which ran here a few days ago enjoyed in Margaretville its first showing in the United States. This is not the first time Margaretville has had such an experience. It happens many times a year.”
Other improvements took place over the years. The Andes Recorder of October 31, 1924 noted that, “There has arrived at Margaretville to be installed in the Galli-Curci theatre, a $10,000 pipe organ, it having been shipped from San Francisco, Cal. It will be operated by electricity and is the gift of a friend.”
The theater also served as a location for numerous community events. October 1924 saw a meeting of the Democratic Women of the Town of Middletown. Newspaper references throughout the 1920s and 1930s described church bake sales, graduations, high school glee club concerts, locally produced plays, operettas for children, and meetings of the Western Catskills Sportsman’s Association all taking place there.
Of course, ownership of the theater changed a few times over the decades. Under owners Harry and Kathy Nichols, 1985 saw a new sound system, a new screen, and new programming. The July 11, 1985 Catskill Mountain News noted that they were adding a four-week onscreen opera series to be shown on Friday and Saturday nights at 10 p.m. Operas presented in that series were Carmen, La Traviata, Aïda, and the Tales of Hoffman. The sixth annual Hall of Fame Jazz Concert was scheduled to be presented live on stage on August 24.
This summer a popup show of mid-twentieth century robots filled a number of weekends there.
Multiple clips of Amelita Galli-Curci singing are available on the internet. My favorite is the 1917 “Bell Song” with its long a cappella beginning.
T. M. Bradshaw shares other thoughts on history at tmbradshawbooks.com.
