BOYES HOT SPRINGS, CA — Sheri Mignano Crawford, the author of several prominent books on Italian and Italian American Music has announced the release of Game of Hearts: The Life of Carlos Curti, now available for purchase on amazon.
Available as a download from amazon for Kindle for $7.99, a print version is planned for the near future and will retail for $22.95.
About Carlos Curti
For more than 100 years, the name of Cárlos Curti languished. The Italian immigrant musician who was the first to bring attention to the Neapolitan mandolin in America became a mere footnote in the early history of Italian music in America. While he ignited the mandolin's potential and fueled generations with the love and passion to learn how to play it, he has been largely forgotten in the mist of time.
Game of Hearts may not have even been possible fifteen or twenty years ago. With the tenacity of a zealous admirer and a committed fanatic with an unrelenting curiosity, Crawford pursued every imaginable source to create the life story of Cárlos Curti. For the first time, his biographical story is rectified. We can now acknowledge and fully appreciate his multitude of musical talents as a conductor, composer, recording artist, and performer. He incorporated all his talents performing on the violin, xylophone, and the mandolin, and devoted a lifetime to exploring every available medium, including opera and the silent film industry.
Throughout Curti's long climb toward his musical potential, he was married to a German- born immigrant woman in México City, but inextricably entangled in a duplicitous romantic liaison with an indigenous Totonac woman in Veracruz. Digging below the surface of this fatal love triangle, his story unraveled like a Verdi operatic tragedy. His personal and professional lives collided as he juggled three hearts and handled the challenges of balancing his obligations to the Mexican army, conducting municipal bands, teaching, performing on Mexico City's national stage, and ultimately conducting the orchestra of the world-famous Circo-Teatro Orrin.
While living among an elite circle of Anglo-Americans, he maintained significant patronage tied to President Porfirio Diaz's regime and his political vortex. Curti's exit from Mexico forced him to watch from afar as the Revolution took its toll. Consequently, the mystery surrounding his suicide, caused by a lack of access and careless methods of verification made for a false narrative. For those reasons music historians were bereft of sufficient biographical facts and lacked an accurate historical context.
Sheri's discovery of buried evidence has revealed Curti's secret life, and it has all come together to explain what might have actually happened. Examining the choices made by others and choices made by Curti himself helps readers to understand how he was propelled to a tragic end. Set within the backdrop of a dramatic period leading up to and during the Mexican Revolution Curti was one of the lucky ones who exited before it became too dangerous, but he was forced to make choices that put him directly into a parallel vice which squeezed him into his ultimate dilemma. To be or not to be. He chose not to be.
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