Opera Scotland

Gian Carlo Menotti Suggest updates

Born Cadegliano-Viconago, 7 July 1911.

Died Monte Carlo, 1 February 2007.

Italian-born American composer and librettist.

Gian Carlo Menotti was one of the most prolific and successful composers of opera in the post-war decades. He has the rare distinction of having had several of his operas performed on Broadway and televised, a novelty in the early 1950s. While Amelia al ballo is a frothy comedy, and The Telephone a brief sketch, some of his other early operas are dramatically effective works, generally on serious subjects, most notably The Consul and The Saint of Bleecker Street. Amahl and the Night Visitors, a short work, became, for many years, a fixture in American TV schedules at Christmas. As a librettist, he provided many of the texts for his own pieces, and had a success with his libretto for Samuel Barber's Vanessa (1958). In the same year he established the Festival of Two Worlds, in the Umbrian town of Spoleto and the historic American town of Charleston, North Carolina. For the last decades of his life he also maintained a home in Scotland, having acquired a mansion-house in East Lothian.

Operas performed in Scotland are shown in bold:-

01   Amelia al ballo (Philadelphia 1937) (cpsr)

02   The Old Maid and the Thief (Radio 1939, prod Philadelphia 1941) (cpsr)

03   The Island God (New York 1942) (cpsr)

04   The Medium (New York 1946) (cpsr)

05   The Telephone, or L’amour à trois (New York 1947) (cpsr)

06   The Consul (Philadelphia 1950) (cpsr)

07   Amahl and the Night Visitors (TV 1951, prod Bloomington 1952) (cpsr)                      

08   The Saint of Bleecker Street (New York 1954) (cpsr)

09   The Unicorn, the Dragon, and the Manticore, or The Three Sundays of a Poet (Washington 1956) (cpsr)

10   Maria Golovin (Brussels 1958) (cpsr)

11   Labyrinth (TV 1963) (cpsr)

12   Le Dernier Sauvage (Paris 1963) (cpsr)

13   Martin’s Lie (Bristol 1964) (cpsr)

14   Help, Help, the Globolinks! (Hamburg 1968) (cpsr)

15   The Most Important Man (New York 1971) (cpsr)

16   Tamu-Tamu (Chicago 1973) (cpsr)

17   The Egg (Washington 1976) (cpsr)

18   The Hero (Philadelphia 1976) (cpsr)

19   The Trial of the Gypsy (New York 1978) (cpsr)

20   Chip and his Dog (Guelph 1979) (cpsr

21   La loca (San Diego 1979) (cpsr)

22   A Bride from Pluto (Washington 1982) (cpsr)

23   The Boy who Grew too Fast (Wilmington 1982) (cpsr)

24   Goya (Washington 1986) (cpsr)

25   The Wedding (Seoul 1988) (cpsr)