Julia Culp

Dutch mezzo-soprano

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."