Amahl and the Night Visitors - 1980

History

Notes:
By Robert Read

By the mid-twentieth century, the Italian-born composer Gian Carlo Menotti had achieved world recognition as an operatic composer through the appearance of such notable stage works as The Medium in 1947, and, three years later, the critically acclaimed The Consul. It was in 1951, then, that the National Broadcasting Company commissioned Menotti to write a “Christmas” opera expressly for television, to be broadcast at the end of the year.

In creating the work, Menotti drew from his own childhood experiences in rural Italy, where the Three Kings, rather than Santa Claus, were known to bring holiday gifts to children. Characteristically, the composer did not actually assemble the work in concrete form until shortly before the Christmas deadline. Menotti later recalled that, as the year progressed, “I simply didn’t have one idea in my head. One November afternoon as I was walking rather gloomily through…the Metropolitan Museum, I chanced to stop in front of The Adoration of the Kings by Hieronymus Bosch, and as I was looking at it, suddenly I heard again…the weird song of the Three Kings…They had come back to me and had brought me a gift.” The character of Amahl surely was drawn from the composer’s own childhood experience; Menotti himself was for a time a cripple before being taken to the Madonna at the sanctuary of Sacro Monte, near his birthplace, the town of Categliano, after which his leg healed completely.

The world premiere performance of the opera, which was barely an hour in length, was indeed the live broadcast over NBC television on December 24, 1951; subsequent television presentations of Amahl were taped productions. The first live stage performance of the work was given by the New York City Opera in April 1952; the conductor for this performance was the late Thomas Schippers, who had conducted the premiere broadcast and who on this occasion was making his New York City Opera debut.

In the 29 years since its creation, Amahl and the Night Visitors, with its harmonic simplicity and refreshing major key, has become perhaps the world’s most frequently performed opera; in 1969, for example, there were no less than 350 productions in the United States alone. The handsome production which you are hearing this evening marks the restoration, after a hiatus of several years, of a most delightful Christmas tradition of the UCLA Department of Music.

Produced by arrangement with G. Schirmer, Inc., publisher and copyright owner.
Thanks to Donn Weiss for his kind assistance with our chorus.