Every December, the Philadelphia Orchestra schedules Christmas-related concerts. Yet it never performed Gian-Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors until now. That’s an inexplicable oversight, especially when we consider the composer’s Philadelphia connection, as a student and, later, faculty member at the Curtis Institute of Music.
This semi-staged performance was so effective that it deserves to become a recurring event, like The Messiah. Menotti’s Christmas opera brings joyous memories of childhood, even for those with no religious allegiance.
Menotti himself was anti-clerical; his connection with Christmas was more sentimental than doctrinaire. And in our materialistic age, his opera is a powerful reminder about the primacy of giving, and of love.
Bramwell Tovey conducted an excellent reading with an orchestra of only 45 players, which is appropriate for Amahl’s transparent scoring. The opera is subtle and delicate as it personalizes the legend of three kings traveling to the site of Jesus’s birth. You wouldn’t want a big orchestral sound that might overwhelm the singers.
Menotti’s other operas — such as The Medium, The Telephone, The Consul, and The Saint of Bleeker Street — have overwrought passions and melodramatic music. Amahl is the opposite. Menotti invented a story about a crippled youngster and his impoverished, widowed mother. The boy offers his crutch to the three kings as his gift to the Christ child and, because of his generosity, he is miraculously cured.
As his normal custom, Menotti wrote the libretto as well as the music. The opera was commissioned by the NBC television network and had its premiere on Christmas eve, 1951.
Renée Tatum was superb as Amahl’s mother, with fine diction and a rich mezzo sound. She brought out the human quality in the drama. Dante Michael DiMaio sang sweetly as Amahl. His young soprano voice lacked projection, but keep in mind that Menotti wrote for TV microphones whereas DiMaio sang without amplification in a 2500-seat hall.
Tenor Andrew Stenson, bass-baritone Brandon Cedel and bass David Leigh sang well as the kings. The chorus’s entrance at the opera’s climax was especially thrilling, under the direction of Amanda Quist. Omer Ben Seadia directed the effectively simple stage direction. Danielle Orlando deserves great credit for vocal preparation and coaching.
Menotti pleased large audiences but his emotional, heart-on-sleeve music went out of fashion during the last decades of his life. Menotti was 40 when Amahl and the Night Visitors premiered. He was 60 when he was my guest on my radio program, and he was 95 when he died in 2007. His neglected work is ripe for reappraisal. Many of us would love to hear his accessible, lyrical music more frequently. And Amahl additionally supplies nostalgia for childhood Christmases.
Tovey also led the orchestra (with its full personnel) in William Walton’s Crown Imperial and Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra. He introduced both with genial English charm.