Menotti, Gian Carlo
Gian Carlo Menotti
Composer
Even as a young child Gian Carlo Menotti displayed a natural ability to compose music, creating tunes to go with children’s poems by the age of five. Retaining this childlike sense of drama and playfulness through a lifetime of composing, Menotti has composed some of the most popular and recognized operas of the twentieth century. He brought opera to radio and television, introducing millions of viewers and listeners to it for the first time. He has received many awards for his work, and during the 2001-2002 season, his ninetieth birthday was celebrated in opera houses across the United States and throughout the world.
Menotti was born the sixth of eight children on July 7, 1911, in Cadegliano, Italy, near Lake Lugano. His father, with whom he had a distant relationship, was an import-export merchant dealing in Colombian coffee. His mother, Ines, an accomplished musician in her own right, had the greatest impact on his life. In the book Menotti: A Biography, written by John Gruen, Menotti said, “My mother was an impulsive woman, and a very handsome one. She had a domineering personality, and many people in the town found her high-handed and a bit of a snob. I think my father was terrified of her. All of us children, however, adored her.” She recognized and nurtured her son’s talent, bringing instructors from Milan to teach Gian Carlo and his siblings piano, cello, and violin.
Menotti’s maternal grandfather had been a popular mayor of Cadegliano, and many relatives lived in the area. They often had large family gatherings, particularly in the summer, as Lake Lugano was a popular summer vacation area. On these occasions family members would entertain each other with chamber music nights and puppet shows complete with music and special effects. Menotti owned almost 100 puppets as a child and loved to put on fairy tale productions.
As he grew up, Gian Carlo’s talent was so remarkable that his family assumed he would become a musician. At age eleven he had already written his first opera, The Death of Pierrot In 1923 he began to attend the Verdi Conservatory of Music in Milan where he studied for three years. A family friend, the famous conductor and composer Arturo Toscanini, recommended that Menotti attend school in the United States at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His mother politely declined, not wanting to send her son so far away.
Moved to America
Everything changed, however, when Menotti’s father died. His mother, realizing the family business would no longer support them, remarried and moved to South Africa. Acting on Toscanini’s suggestion, she finally arranged for Gian Carlo to attend the Curtis Institute; she also found an Italian-American family with whom he could live. At 16 Menotti moved across the ocean to
For the Record…
Born on July 7, 1911, in Cadegliano, Italy; son of Alfonso (an import-export merchant) and Ines (Pellini) Menotti; children: adopted son Frances “Chip” Phelan. Education: Graduated from the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, PA, 1933.
Began composing music and learning the piano, violin, and cello, age five; wrote his first opera, age eleven; moved to the United States, 1928; achieved his first success with Amelia Goes to the Ball, 1937; composed the first opera written for radio, The Old Maid and the Thief, 1939; achieved international recognition with The Medium, 1946; composed the first opera written for television, Amahl and the Night Visitors, 1951; started the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, 1958; started the Festival of Two Worlds in Charleston, SC, 1977; composed Goya for Placido Domingo, 1986.
Awards: Guggenheim Award (fellowship), 1946-47; New York Drama Critics Award for The Consul, 1950; Pulitzer Prize in Music for The Consul, 1950, and The Saint ofBleeker Street, 1954; Kennedy Center Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts, 1984; Musical America Musician of the Year, 1991.
Addresses: Home —Yester House, Gifford, East Lothian, EH41 4JF, Scotland. Publisher —G. Schirmer, 257 Park Ave. South, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10010, (212) 254-2013.
learn music in a country where he didn’t even know the language.
At Curtis, Menotti began studying with Rosario Scalero, a composition instructor with whom he would train for six years. Scalero introduced Menotti to Samuel Barber, who agreed to help the new student adjust to American life. Because Menotti could not yet speak English, the two communicated in French. During their time at Curtis, they began a lifelong friendship, spending four consecutive summers in Menotti’s hometown of Cadegliano.
In 1933 Menotti graduated from Curtis with honors. He and Barber decided to move to Vienna, where they shared an apartment. Barber had left school early, but came back to finish his degree in 1934, and then began to achieve success in the United States. In May of 1936 they joined up again, traveling through Europe.
Menotti finished composing Amelia Goes to the Ball in the spring of 1937 and returned to the United States at the invitation of Mary Louise Curtis Bok, the founder of the Curtis Institute of Music. When she was requested to finance a presentation at the school, she refused unless Menotti’s new opera could be included. The performance took place on April 1, 1937. “Amelia was dedicated to Mrs. Bok, towards whom I have so much to be grateful for,” Menotti said in his biography. “I have a very great fondness for it. Not only was it my first opera, and my first success, but it was also the only opera of mine that was ever heard by my mother.” Mrs. Bok paid for his mother, who was already ailing, to come from South Africa to see it. Amelia was so successful that it was presented at the Metropolitan Opera of New York on March 3, 1938.
Shortly after the Metropolitan presentation, Menotti was invited to Rome by Dino Alfieri, the Italian minister of culture, to discuss the opera’s Italian premiere. At the time Italy was under the thumb of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini. Menotti was told that the presentation would be supported if he would become a member of the Fascist party. He refused, and the press was ordered to give poor reviews to the opera when it was presented. Menotti decided to concentrate on success in America instead.
In 1939 Samuel Chotzinoff of the National Brohadcasting Company (NBC) commissioned him to write an opera specifically for radio. The Old Maid and The Thief premiered on April 22, 1939, to favorable reviews. It was considered a great achievement in radio, broad-casting opera to audiences that may not otherwise have been exposed to it.
High Notes and Low Notes
Menotti’s popularity launched him into high society and the company of many rich and famous people. He enjoyed the lifestyle and gained a reputation for being an entertaining and charming guest. Everything changed, however, with the failure of his third opera, The Island God. Trying to impress the critics by presenting a serious opera, he disappointed his audiences, who were expecting lighter fare. He suddenly found he was no longer receiving invitations to parties and social gatherings. Worse, he was unable to find work and was running out of money.
After struggling in New York, Barber and Menotti were helped by their longtime supporter, Mary Louise Curtis Bok (now Mrs. Efrem Zimbalist), who gave them the money to buy a house in which they could work. They moved into the house, called Capricorn, in the summer of 1943. They worked on compositions during the week, but on the weekends, Capricorn became a hot spot for social gatherings.
In 1944 Menotti agreed to write the music for a ballet called Sebastian. He was quite pleased with his own work, but frustrated by the lack of effort put in by the choreographer. The experience prompted him to insist on greater control over future productions. He would not only compose the music and write the lyrics, but also take on the role of stage director and casting director. His sense of playfulness also found him playing bit parts in some of the productions.
His next big success, The Medium, brought him even greater fame. Performed originally on May 8, 1946, it was joined the following year by another of Menotti’s pieces, The Telephone. The two ran as a double bill on Broadway for seven months, playing to small audiences despite positive reviews. Menotti then wrote a letter to the man who first recommended that he study music in the United States, Arturo Toscanini, inviting him to attend. When Toscanini agreed, Menotti leaked it to the press. After that, there was no longer any trouble selling the seats. When it closed on Broadway, the production was taken to Paris and London, where Menotti finally achieved international success. A few years later, it was made into a film in Rome.
In 1950 Menotti opened his three-act opera The Consul in Philadelphia. Immediately hailed by the critics, it won the Drama Critics Circle Award and a Pulitzer Prize. It also ran on Broadway for eight months.
Beloved Christinas Opera
In 1951 Menotti was approached again by NBC, this time to provide a Christmas opera for television. Amahl and the Night Visitors, which premiered on Christmas Eve 1951, became his best-known work and was shown on NBC during the Christmas season for 16 years. It was also performed onstage, and by 1972 the Central Opera Services Directory listed it as the most-performed opera in the United States.
In 1958 Menotti started the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, to celebrate the cultural collaboration of the arts in Europe and the United States. The Festival, presented each year, became so successful that another festival was started in Charleston, South Carolina in 1977. In the mid-1960s Menotti began working frequently with Francis Phelan, a troubled young actor and figure skater. Phelan began to appear in many of Menotti’s performances. In 1974 Menotti lega adopted Phelan, whom he called “Chip,” as his son.
Menotti received the Kennedy Center Honor for Life-time Achievement in the Arts in 1984. Two years later he was commissioned by Placido Domingo to write Goya, which Domingo performed with the Washington Opera at the Kennedy Center for Performing Arts. In 1991, at 80 years old, he was named Musician of the Year by Musical America.
Although he has retained his Italian citizenship, Menotti has spent most of his life in the United States. He now resides in Scotland at his manor, Yester House, with his son, daughter-in-law, and grandchildren. His son has taken over most of the responsibilities of running the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, but Menotti remains actively involved.
Selected compositions
Pastorale for Pianos and Strings, 1934.
Amelia Goes to the Ball, 1937.
The Old Maid and the Thief, 1939.
The Telephone, 1946.
The Medium, 1946.
The Consul, 1950.
Amahl and the Night Visitors, 1951.
Apocalypse (symphonic poem), 1951.
The Saint of Sleeker Street, 1954.
The Unicom, the Gorgon and the Manticore (ballet), 1956.
Maria Golovin, 1958.
Le dernier sauvage, 1963.
Martin’s Lie, 1964.
Help, Help, the Globolink!, 1968.
The Most Important Man, 1971.
Tamu-Tamu, 1973.
Symphony no. 1 in A minor, “The Halcyon,” 1976.
The Hero, 1976.
La loca, 1979.
A Bride from Pluto, 1982.
Goya, 1986.
The Wedding, 1988.
Sources
Books
Gruen, John, Menotti: A Biography, MacMillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1978.
International Who’s Who, Europa Publications LTD, 1999.
Periodicals
Opera News, May 1994, p. 10.
Online
“Gian Carlo Menotti,” G. Schirmer, Inc., http://www.schirmer.com/composers/menotti/bio.html (February 5, 2002). “Gian Carlo Menotti: Renaissance Man of the Theater,” G.
Schirmer, Inc., http://www.schirmer.com/composers/menotti/essay.html (February 5, 2002).
—Sarah Parkin
Menotti, Gian Carlo
Menotti, Gian Carlo
Menotti, Gian Carlo, remarkable Italian composer; b. Cadegliano, July 7, 1911. He was the 6th of 10 children. He learned the rudiments of music from his mother, and began to compose as a child, making his first attempt at an opera, entitled The Death of Pierrot, at the age of 10. After training at the Milan Cons. (1924–27), he studied with Scalerò at the Curtis Inst. of Music in Philadelphia (1927–33). Although Menotti associated himself with the cause of American music, and spent much of his time in the U.S., he retained his Italian citizenship. As a composer, he is unique on the American scene, being the first to create American opera possessing such an appeal to audiences as to become established in the permanent repertoire. Inheriting the natural Italian gift for operatic drama and an expressive singing line, he adapted these qualities to the peculiar requirements of the American stage and to the changing fashions of the period; his serious operas have a strong dramatic content in the realistic style stemming from the Italian verismo. He wrote his own librettos, marked by an extraordinary flair for drama and for the communicative power of the English language; with this is combined a fine, though subdued, sense of musical humor. Menotti made no pretensions at extreme modernism, and did not fear to approximate the successful formulas developed by Verdi and Puccini; the influence of Mussorgsky’s realistic prosody is also in evidence, particularly in recitative. When dramatic tension required a greater impact, Menotti resorted to atonal and polytonal writing, leading to climaxes accompanied by massive dissonances. His first successful stage work was Amelia Goes to the Ball, an opera buffa in 1 act (originally to an Italian libretto by the composer, as Amelia al ballo), staged at the Academy of Music, Philadelphia, on April 1, 1937. This was followed by another comic opera, The Old Maid and the Thief, commissioned by NBC, first performed on the radio, April 22, 1939, and on the stage, by the Philadelphia Opera Co., on Feb. 11, 1941. Menotti’s next operatic work was The Island God, produced by the Metropolitan Opera, N.Y., on Feb. 20, 1942, with indifferent success; but with the production of The Medium (N.Y., May 8, 1946), Menotti established himself as one of the most successful composer-librettists of modern opera. The imaginative libretto, dealing with a fraudulent spiritualist who falls victim to her own practices when she imagines that ghostly voices are real, suited Menotti’s musical talent to perfection; the opera had a long and successful run in N.Y., an unprecedented occurrence in the history of the American lyric theater. A short humorous opera, The Telephone, was first produced by the N.Y. Ballet Soc, Feb. 18, 1947, on the same bill with The Medium; these 2 contrasting works were subsequently staged all over the U.S. and in Europe, often on the same evening. Menotti then produced The Consul (Philadelphia, March 1, 1950), his finest tragic work, describing the plight of political fugitives vainly trying to escape from an unnamed country but failing to obtain the necessary visa from the consul of an anonymous power; very ingeniously, the author does not include the title character in the cast, since the consul never appears on the stage but remains a shadowy presence. The Consul exceeded Menotti’s previous operas in popular success; it had a long run in N.Y., and received the Pulitzer Prize in Music. On Christmas Eve, 1951, NBC presented Menotti’s television opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, a Christmas story of undeniable poetry and appeal; it became an annual television production every Christmas in subsequent years. His next opera was The Saint of Bleecker Street, set in a N.Y. locale (N.Y, Dec. 27, 1954); it won the Drama Critics’ Circle Award for the best musical play of 1954, and the Pulitzer Prize in Music for 1955. A madrigal ballet, The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manti-core, commissioned by the Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge Foundation, was first presented at the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C., Oct. 21, 1956. His opera Maria Golovin, written expressly for the International Exposition in Brussels, was staged there on Aug. 20, 1958. In 1958 he organized the Festival of 2 Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, staging old and new works; in 1977 he inaugurated an American counterpart of the festival in Charleston, S.C. In many of the festival productions Menotti acted also as stage director. In the meantime, he continued to compose; he produced in quick succession Labyrinth, a television opera to his own libretto (N.Y, March 3, 1963); Death of the Bishop of Brindisi, dramatic cantata with the text by the composer (Cincinnati, May 18, 1963); Le Dernier Sauvage, opera buffa, originally with an Italian libretto by Menotti, produced at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in a French tr. (Oct. 21, 1963; produced in Eng. at the Metropolitan Opera, N.Y, Jan. 23, 1964); Martin’s Lie, chamber opera to Menotti’s text (Bath, England, June 3, 1964); Help, Help, the Globolinksl, “an opera in 1 act for children and those who like children” to words by Menotti, with electronic effects (Hamburg, Dec. 19, 1968); The Most Important Man, opera to his own libretto (N.Y, March 12, 1971); The Hero, comic opera (Philadelphia, June 1, 1976); The Egg, a church opera to Menotti’s own libretto (Washington Cathedral, June 17, 1976); The Trial of the Gypsy for Treble Voices and Piano (N.Y, May 24, 1978); Miracles for Boy’s Chorus (Fort Worth, April 22, 1979); La loca, opera to Menotti’s own libretto dealing with a mad daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella (San Diego, June 3, 1979); A Bride from Pluto, children’s opera (Washington, D.C., April 14, 1982); The Boy Who Grew Too Fast, opera for young people (Wilmington, Del., Sept. 24, 1982); The Wedding, opera (Seoul, Sept. 16, 1988); Singing Child, children’s opera (Charleston, S.C, May 31, 1993). Among Menotti’s non-operatic works are the ballets Sebastian (1944) and Errand into the Maze (N.Y, Feb. 2, 1947); 2 piano concertos: No. 1 (Boston, Nov. 2, 1945) and No. 2 (Miami, June 23, 1982); Apocalypse, symphonic poem (Pittsburgh, Oct. 19, 1951); Violin Concerto (Philadelphia, Dec. 5, 1952, Zimbalist soloist); Triplo Concerto a Tre, triple concerto (N.Y., Oct. 6, 1970); Landscapes and Remembrances, cantata to his own autobiographical words (Milwaukee, May 14, 1976); First Symphony, subtitled The Halcyon (Philadelphia, Aug. 4, 1976); Nocturne for Soprano, String Quartet, and Harp (N.Y., Oct. 24, 1982); Double Bass Concerto (N.Y. Phil, Oct. 20, 1983, James VanDemark, soloist, Zubin Mehta conducting); For the Death of Orpheus for Tenor, Chorus, and Orch. (Atlanta, Nov. 8, 1990). He also wrote a number of pièces d’occasion such as Trio for a House-Warming Party for Piano, Cello, and Flute (1936); Variations on a Theme by Schumann; Pastorale for Piano and Strings; Poemetti per Maria Rosa (piano pieces for children); etc. He is also the author of the librettos for Samuel Barber’s operas Vanessa (Metropolitan Opera, N.Y, Jan. 15, 1958) and A Hand of Bridge (1959); also wrote a play without music, The Leper (Tallahassee, April 22, 1970).
Menotti’s last years were plagued with disputes over his role as an artistic director. In 1991 a major dispute arose between the composer and the director of the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, but ultimately Menotti retained control. However, in 1993 he announced that he was taking the festival away from Charleston, but the city’s mayor intervened and Menotti lost control of his festival. That same year he was named artistic director of the Rome Opera, but again conflicts over artistic policy between the composer and the superintendent led to Menotti’s dismissal in 1994.
Bibliography
J. Gruen,M.: A Biography (N.Y., 1978); J. Ardoin, The Stages of M. (Garden City, N.Y., 1985).
—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire
Menotti, Gian Carlo
Menotti, Gian Carlo 1911-2007
Menotti, Gian Carlo 1911-2007
OBITUARY NOTICE—
See index for SATA sketch: Born July 7, 1911, in Cadegliano, Italy; died February 1, 2007, in Monaco. Menotti was a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer of operas popular on Broadway and on television and radio, including The Consul, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and The Saint of Bleecker Street. The son of a coffee merchant, he was taught by his mother to play the violin, piano, and cello. The young Menotti proved very capable and even composed his own opera, The Death of Pierrot, when he was just eleven years old. After his father died in 1928, Menotti's mother took her son to Philadelphia and enrolled him at the Curtis Institute of Music. Though he did not speak English at the time, his letter of recommendation from Arturo Toscanini easily impressed the school. He graduated in 1933, then moved to Vienna, Austria, where he had a home with fellow composer Samuel Barber. Menotti's first opera to be performed was Amelia Goes to the Ball. It was produced in Philadelphia in 1937 and at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1938. Next, he notably composed the first opera written expressly for the radio, The Old Maid and the Thief (1939), which was also produced on the stage two years later. Menotti's The Island God (1942) was panned by critics, but the composer felt the problem was with staging, and so he thereafter insisted he be allowed to have a say on how his operas were produced. When the United States entered World War II, Menotti offered his services to the Office of War Information, and became a broadcaster for Italian-language radio. After the war, Menotti was a part-time composition teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music for several years and briefly worked as a script writer for Metro-Goldwyn Mayer. He continued to write operas, such as The Medium (1946), which he adapted himself to film, and The Consul (1950), which earned him his first Pulitzer. His The Saint of Bleecker Street (1955) also won a Pulitzer, as well as a Drama Critics' Circle Award, even though it proved unpopular with audiences. One of Menotti's greatest popular operas, Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), was written for television and became a standard Christmas season program. Known for creating romantic melodies that reminded many theater reviewers of the works of Puccini, Menotti was a traditionalist. Thus, when a modern movement to create experimental, atonal works began in the 1960s, he was increasingly criticized for lack of innovation. The composer, nevertheless, refused to cater to critics; he did very well financially because of income from television rights to his operas. He continued to compose, too, though a number of critics consider his later works to be minor achievements. Among these are The Egg (1976), Juana, la Loca (1979), Goya (1986), and Giorino di Nozze (1988). He also composed many symphonies, chamber music, and vocal/choral works. Among his other accomplishments, Menotti was composer and artistic director of the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, and cofounder of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, which he helped run from 1958 until 1999, when he turned it over to his adopted son, Francis Phelan.
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
BOOKS
Contemporary Composers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1992.
Contemporary Musicians, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.
PERIODICALS
Chicago Tribune, February 2, 2007, section 1, p. 14.
New York Times, February 2, 2007, p. C11.
Times (London, England), February 3, 2007, p. 68.
Washington Post, February 2, 2007, p. B7.
Menotti, Gian Carlo 1911-2007
Menotti, Gian Carlo 1911-2007
OBITUARY NOTICE—
See index for CA sketch: Born July 7, 1911, in Cadegliano, Italy; died February 1, 2007, in Monaco. Menotti was a Pulitzer Prizewinning composer of operas popular on Broadway and on television and radio, including The Consul, Amahl and the Night Visitors, and The Saint of Bleecker Street. The son of a coffee merchant, he was taught by his mother to play the violin, piano, and cello. The young Menotti proved very capable and even composed his own opera, The Death of Pierrot, when he was just eleven years old. After his father died in 1928, Menotti's mother took her son to Philadelphia and enrolled him at the Curtis Institute of Music. Though he did not speak English at the time, his letter of recommendation from Arturo Toscanini easily impressed the school. He graduated in 1933, then moved to Vienna, Austria, where he had a home with fellow composer Samuel Barber. Menotti's first opera to be performed was Amelia Goes to the Ball. It was produced in Philadelphia in 1937 and at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1938. Next, he notably composed the first opera written expressly for the radio, The Old Maid and the Thief (1939), which was also produced on the stage two years later. Menotti's The Island God (1942) was panned by critics, but the composer felt the problem was with staging, and so he thereafter insisted he be allowed to have a say on how his operas were produced. When America entered World War II, Menotti offered his services to the Office of War Information, for which he was a broadcaster for Italian-language radio. After the war, Menotti was a part-time composition teacher at the Curtis Institute of Music for several years and briefly a script writer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He continued to write operas, such as The Medium (1946), which he adapted himself to film, and The Consul (1950), which earned him his first Pulitzer. His The Saint of Bleecker Street (1955) also won a Pulitzer, as well as a Drama Critics' Circle Award, even though it proved unpopular with audiences. One of Menotti's greatest popular operas is Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), which was written for television and has become a standard Christmas season program. Known for his romantic melodies that reminded many theater reviewers of Puccini, Menotti was a traditionalist as a composer. Thus, when a modern movement to create experimental, atonal works began in the 1960s, Menotti was increasingly criticized for lack of innovation. The composer, nevertheless, refused to cater to critics; he did very well financially because of income from television rights to his operas. He continued to compose, too, though a number of critics consider his later works to be minor achievements. Among these are The Egg (1976), Juana, La Loca (1979), Goya (1986), and Giorino di Nozze (1988). He also composed many symphonies, chamber music, and vocal/choral works. Among his other accomplishments, Menotti was composer and artistic director of the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina, and cofounder of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, which he helped run from 1958 until 1999, when he turned it over to his adopted son, Francis Phelan.
OBITUARIES AND OTHER SOURCES:
BOOKS
Contemporary Composers, St. James Press (Detroit, MI), 1992.
Contemporary Musicians, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 2002.
PERIODICALS
Chicago Tribune, February 2, 2007, Section 1, p. 14.
New York Times, February 2, 2007, p. C11.
Times (London, England), February 3, 2007, p. 68.
Washington Post, February 2, 2007, p. B7.
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti
Gian Carlo Menotti (born 1911), Italian-born American composer, wrote highly melodramatic operas that mixed lyricism with atonality.
Gian Carlo Menotti, born in Cadegliano, Italy, to Alfonso and Ines (Pellini) Menotti, was brought up in a musical atmosphere and started composing as a child. He studied at the Milan Conservatory from 1923 to 1927 then came to the United States in 1928. In 1933 he finished his musical education at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, where in 1936 his comic opera Amelia Goes to the Ball was first produced. Commissioned by the National Broadcasting Company for a radio opera, he produced the humorous The Old Maid and the Thief (1939). In this work certain characteristics of Menotti's mature style began to appear. His effortless method of transforming the natural inflections of ordinary conversation into musical lines that remain in the memory was quite remarkable.
After the failure of his next opera Menotti turned away from the stage for a few years, but on a Guggenheim fellowship in 1946 he wrote what became his most successful work, The Medium. It set a precedent in the history of American opera by running on Broadway, coupled with a short curtain raiser, The Telephone. In 1951 the composer directed a motion picture version of the work.
Menotti's next operas never quite sustained the excitement generated by The Medium, even though The Consul (1950), which also ran on Broadway, received a Pulitzer Prize, and The Saint of Bleecker Street (1951) won several awards. Menotti always wrote his own librettos and preferred excessively melodramatic scenes. While ideal for a work like The Medium (essentially a ghost story), heavy melodrama seemed out of place in the later works, which professed to have serious social content. Musically, however, they offered some striking lyric passages.
The Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors, written for television in 1951, was highly successful. Its simple charm has made it a perennial favorite during the holiday season. Menotti took a stand against avant-garde music in the fantasy opera Help, Help, the Globolinks! (1968), where the invading globolinks, representing extremist musical tendencies, are destroyed. In The Most Important Man (1971), with its heavy emphasis on melodrama and social significance, Menotti returned to the approach used in The Consul and The Saint of Bleecker Street. His musical style remained unchanged, relying on a natural sense of lyricism interspersed with more dissonant passages as the plot demanded.
Though known for his operatic works of the 1940s and 50s, Menotti also has composed lively orchestral music, including Piano Concerto in F (1945) and Violin Concerto (1952), as well as the ballet Sebastian (1944).
In addition to composing, Menotti was active in a number of related activities. He taught at the Curtis Institute of Music from 1941 to 1945, and in 1958 he established the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, which was expanded in 1977 to include Charleston, South Carolina. He was also an excellent stage director, and one of his most remarkable gifts was in casting his operas. He had an almost magical sense of getting the right performer for each part; as a result, many singers appearing in his works became identified with these roles throughout their performing careers. In 1992 Menotti was named artistic director of the Rome Opera and headed two seasons. After numerous problems stemming from reported financial mismanagement by the top administrator, Menotti did not return in 1994. He is the recipient of numerous awards, including the Kennedy Center award, 1984, and the New York City Mayor's Liberty award, 1987.
Further Reading
Information on Menotti's life and work is in Joseph Machlis, Introduction to Contemporary Music (1961), and more extensively in David Ewen, ed., Composers since 1900 (1969). Also see Contemporary Composers (1992). □