Synopsis
On Christmas Eve in 1951, NBC television broadcast live the world premiere performance of Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors. Now, for decades the kinescope recording of that original live transmission was thought to be lost, but miraculously, a copy resurfaced just in time for Amahl’s 50th anniversary and was shown at the Museum of Television and Radio in Beverly Hills in December of 2001.
On the broadcast, the dapper Menotti can be seen introducing the new work, confessing that NBC had commissioned the opera in 1950, but its wasn’t until the Thanksgiving of 1951 that he actually began working on it, inspired by the painting “The Adoration of the Magi,” which he saw at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In fact, Menotti was working on his new score up to the last minute, delivering it bit by bit to the performers prior to its premiere.
The opera proved a hit, and for the next five years became an annual live holiday broadcast on NBC.
NBC continued to air Amahl occasionally through the 1970s, but by that time it had become an established seasonal tradition for both professional and amateur performers coast to coast.
Music Played in Today's Program
Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007): Amahl and the Night Visitors Suite; The New Zealand Symphony; Andrew Schenck, conductor; Koch 7005
On This Day
Births
1879 - Russian composer and pianist Nicolai Medtner (see Jan. 5, 1880)
1881 - American composer Charles Wakefield Cadman, in Johnstown, Pennsylvania
1950 - American composer Libby Larsen, in Wilmington, Delaware
Deaths
1453 - English composer John Dunstable, 65, in London
1935 - Austrian composer Alban Berg, 50, in Vienna
1975 - American composer and conductor Bernard Herrmann, 64, in Los Angeles, after completing the film score for Scorsese’s Taxi Driver
Premieres
1739 - Handel: revival performance of oratorio Acis and Galetea (Julian date: Dec. 13)
1871 - Verdi: opera Aida in Cairo, Egypt, at the Khedival Theater
1951 - Menotti: opera Amahl and the Night Visitors as a TV broadcast on the NBC network. According to Opera America magazine, this is one of the most frequently-produced American operas during the past decade.
Others
1920 - Last operatic appearance of Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, in an evening performance of Halevy’s La Juive (The Jewess) at the old Metropolitan Opera in New York City. Caruso would die in Naples (where he made his operatic debut on March 15, 1895) at 48 on August 2, 1921.
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About Composers Datebook®
Host John Birge presents a daily snapshot of composers past and present, with timely information, intriguing musical events and appropriate, accessible music related to each.
He has been hosting, producing and performing classical music for more than 25 years. Since 1997, he has been hosting on Minnesota Public Radio's Classical Music Service. He played French horn for the Cincinnati Symphony and Pops Orchestra and performed with them on their centennial tour of Europe in 1995. He was trained at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, Eastman School of Music and Interlochen Arts Academy.
