Word: menotti
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Gian-Carlo Menotti's latest opera, The Hero, opens in a modern bedroom that has been decorated as a tourist attraction. To the right sits a fourposter. It is roped off and its curtains are drawn. In the rear is a stand displaying souvenir dishes and postcards. Also on sale are toy replicas of a man in bed. Two tourists, a husband and wife, enter the room. The proprietress announces that the admission is $2 each. Replies the man: "Two dollars! Shit!" Leave it to the man who brought opera to both Broadway (The Consul) and film (The Medium...
...rises and falls to the natural conversational flow of the Russian words. Boris' realistic-in a sense unoperatic-style of recitative is perhaps Mussorgsky's greatest innovation and contribution to future operatic composers. Says Conductor Schippers: "Boris influenced so many composers-Puccini, Stravinsky, Janacek, even Gian Carlo Menotti. Without it we might not have had a Pelleas et Melisande. That's how important I think Boris is." -William Bender
Since Composer Gian Carlo Menotti launched his Spoleto Festival 14 years ago, Spoletini have enjoyed raking in the profits. Menotti began to worry that they were missing the cultural meaning of it all, so he held a meeting and urged them to "make the whole city a festival." The fiesta-fond Italians took him at his word, celebrating Menotti's 60th birthday with brass bands, torchlight processions and 2,000 signed testimonials of affection. Awakened by a rendition of his own Triple Concerto, the composer sniffled: "Before this I felt like an ornament. Now I feel like a household...
...tart, epigrammatic wit. Conductors, critics and colleagues regularly felt its sting. Stravinsky once said of Leopold Stokowski that "he must have spent an hour a day trying to find the perfect bisexual hairdo." He called New Yorker Music Critic Winthrop Sargeant "W.S. Deaf." Of a new Gian Carlo Menotti opera, he said, "It is 'farther out' than anything I've seen in a decade; in the wrong direction, of course." He also took on broader targets. The technology of today's recording engineers, he complained, removed natural sound and human errors, producing "a super-glossy, chem...
That does not mean that Menotti has already been consigned to history. Upwards of a thousand performances of his 13 operas are given every year. Says Menotti: "All I can say about my operas is that I have no dead children, which is the most a composer can hope for. I know I am alone in my road. I don't meet many critics or colleagues there-just people, which is very pleasant." · William Bender