Word: carlos
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...ninth child of a father who made a fortune in the import-export business in South America, then returned to his pink villa in the little town of Cadegliano overlooking Lake Lugano to settle down to the quiet life. Gian-Carlo's mother, a dynamic woman who took up painting at 60, the guitar at 62, was the main influence in his life. An artistic woman herself, she sought out talent among all of her children, especially lavished her attention on little Gian-Carlo, who seemed to have the most...
...Promise Me?" By the time he was 16, Gian-Carlo had composed two operas and finished five years of ginnasio and a year and a half of liceo in Milan-"the usual European classical education, a great bore." Far from a bore for him were the family's jaunts to their box at La Scala to hear Toscanini conduct opera...
...Gian-Carlo's musical talent was making him something of a problem child, known as "I'enfant prodige" around Milanese salons. His mother put an end to that. Father Menotti had died, so she packed Gian-Carlo off to Colombia with her to settle her husband's affairs. On the way back to Italy, she stopped in New York, and asked Tullio Serafin, then a top conductor at the Metropolitan, what she should do with her talented but untempered son. The next thing Gian-Carlo knew, he had been plunked down before Composition Teacher Rosario Scalero...
...with a stern eye, he said, "GianCarlo, if I am to teach you, we must come to an agreement, you and I. I promise you that I will be uncompromisingly severe. Do you promise me to put in some very hard work, something you have never done before?" Gian-Carlo promised. And, says Scalero, "he abided by his agreement." Thanks to Scalero's perseverance in making him compose simple motets (polyphonic choral works), Menotti is now a master at writing canons (the complicated, contrapuntal version of what children sing in "rounds" such as Row, Row, Row Your Boat...
...Curtis, Gian-Carlo Menotti met another young composition student named Samuel Barber who, luckily for Gian-Carlo, had studied Italian. Sam's mother...