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146 2 Gregorio Curto Bass Singer, Church Musician, and Vocal Teacher O ne of the most distinguished musicians in New Orleans during the nineteenth century was Gregorio Curto. At first a leading member of the opera troupe at the Théâtre d’Orléans, he later became one of the more successful composers of opera in America, a conductor, a church musician, and a teacher of voice. His continued presence in the city ensured the respect that the musical life of New Orleans garnered among professional musicians and music lovers throughout America. Curto was born in the old Spanish city of Tortoso, about 1805.1 His parents were very poor peasants, and it was by chance that a soldier with some musical background and stationed near his village heard him singing and decided to help him achieve some musical education.2 His earliest musical studies must have proven him to be gifted, so that by the age of twelve or thirteen he was already advanced enough to be in Paris studying with the renowned pedagogue Alexandre Choron (1771–1834). Choron had served as director of the Paris Conservatoire from about 1816 to 1817, and in that latter year—forcefully removed from that great institution—founded his own singing school where Curto became one of his first students. About 1819, when Curto was not yet fourteen, he was sufficiently proficient in music that he served for one year as organist of the cathedral in Soissons, France. But by 1820 he was back in Paris working closely with Choron in voice and composition. To support himself during the next ten apprentice years, Curto was maître de chapelle at the church of the Sorbonne, and at the same time he became a voice teacher at Choron’s school.3 Despite a strong education in composition and professional experience in church music, Curto was heading toward a career as an opera singer. In 1830, when he was twenty-five, he made his Paris debut at the Italian Opera in Rossini’s La Gazza Ladra. With backgrounds in religious music, opera, and singing as well as composition , his future seemed very bright. Gregorio Curto: Bass Singer, Church Musician, and Vocal Teacher | 147 Shortly after his debut, in the summer of 1830, he came to the attention of John Davis, who was in Europe recruiting singers for the upcoming season at the Théâtre d’Orléans. Davis’s opera troupe was the most important not only in New Orleans but throughout America at that time, and he offered enough incentives for Curto to join up. Davis and his entourage with Curto arrived in New Orleans via Baltimore on November 11, 1830,4 and three days later they opened the new season at the Théâtre d’Orléans with François-Adrien Boieldieu ’s popular La Dame Blanche. Composed just five years before, this opera was frequently performed in New Orleans during the nineteenth century. Curto sang the part of Gaveston and, according to one reviewer, he demonstrated a strong voice, but apparently he was not much of an actor. “M. Curto—he has a sonorous voice, harmonious . . . but as for his gestures, we can’t yet say, let’s give him some time.”5 Four days later Curto sang the role of Ferdinand Villebell in Rossini’s La Pie Voleuse (La Gazza Ladra, or The Thieving Magpie), but he is not mentioned in the review, nor is he mentioned in the review of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, performed on November 21, when he sang the role of Don Basilio.6 For two seasons Curto was one of the main figures at the Théâtre d’Orléans. He sang leading parts in Rossini’s L’Italiana in Algieri and Donizetti’s Anna Bolena, in addition to La Dame Blanche, La Gazza Ladra, and The Barber of Seville. By 1832, however, Curto retired from the active opera stage, though he may have continued on occasion to sing there, such as in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots after 1836.7 Instead, he earned his livelihood by serving as a church musician, and he began to cultivate those other occupations for which he then became locally best known: composition, conducting, and teaching. In addition to singing at Théâtre d’Orléans from 1830 to 1832, Curto also performed in dramas. Davis featured not only operas but also vaudevilles (we might term these “operettas”), classical dramas (by French masters from Corneille in the seventeenth...

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