Word: amahl
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Dates: during 1951-1951
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This week a Christmas Eve audience watched the world premiere of Amahl and the Night Visitors on the largest TV hookup (35 stations) that NBC has ever strung together for opera. Like most Menotti works, Amahl is a one-man show-music, libretto and stage direction by the composer. The story is a simple Menotti mixture of melodrama and pathos, with more than enough invention to fill out 50 minutes...
...Amahl, a crippled boy, and his mother live in a rude hut. The three kings, traveling toward Bethlehem, ask lodging for the night. The desperately needy mother tries to steal some of their gold as they sleep, and is caught redhanded. As he did in The Consul, Menotti then makes his story point with dramatic directness. Sings King Melchior (Baritone David Aiken...
...mother (Soprano Rosemary Kuhlmann) radiantly refuses the gold ("For such a King I waited all my life"). Crippled Amahl impulsively offers his crutch as a gift for the newborn child, and as he does so is miraculously cured. He goes off in the morning with the three kings to Bethlehem...
...first opera ever to be commissioned for TV, and first to be sponsored (Hallmark Cards), Amahl was given a production of care and quality, with Bosch-like sets and costumes by topnotch Designer Eugene Berman. Next step for Amahl: a stage première at the Indiana University Opera Workshop in February. After that, Menotti is thinking about the possibility of its being double-billed (perhaps with The Medium') at New York's City Center Opera...
...Opera (Mon. 9:30 p.m., NBC). First showing of Gian Carlo Menotti's new work, Amahl and the Night Visitors...