Julia Culp

Julia Culp
A smiling white woman with dark hair, wearing a strand of pearls and a dress with a deep scooped neckline
Julia Culp, from a 1915 publication
Born6 October 1880
Groningen, the Netherlands
Died13 October 1970
Amsterdam, the Netherlands
OccupationOpera vocalist

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."

Julia Culp and Coenraad V. Bos circa 1915