Julia Culp

Julia Bertha Culp (6 October 1880 – 13 October 1970), the "Dutch nightingale", was an internationally celebrated mezzo-soprano in the years 1901–1919.

"You might describe Julia Culp as a connoisseur’s singer," Michael Oliver wrote in the International Opera Collector in 2000. "Her voice was not large, her compass not wide. She never sang in opera; striking dramatic gesture were not her line. What she excelled in were the singer’s rather than the vocal actress’s virtues: sustained legato line, remarkable breath control, subtle colour, immaculate care for words…. But ‘connoisseur’s singer’ does not mean that only connoisseurs can appreciate her; one becomes a connoisseur by listening to her."

Culp was born in Groningen, the Netherlands into a Jewish family of musicians and comedians. She was the daughter of contrabass player Baruch Culp and his wife Sara Cohen. At the age of seven she began to practice the violin, and at 11 had her first public violin performance. Her first performance as a singer was on 30 December 1893. In the summer of 1896, she left Groningen for Amsterdam, where she studied at the Conservatory under renowned former opera singer Cornélie van Zanten.

Soon after completing her studies in 1900, Culp's singing career took flight. She was discovered by German-American conductor Wilhelm Berger, who took her to Berlin to perform at the concert hall Saal Bechstein in 1901. Before long, she was performing all over Europe and America, sharing the stage with such notable composers, conductors and singers as Edvard Grieg, Richard Strauss, Camille Saint-Saëns, Enrico Caruso, Otto Klemperer, Willem Mengelberg, Pablo Casals, Percy Grainger, Enrique Granados and Thomas Beecham.

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