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). □

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 (b Cadegliano, It., 1911). It.-born composer, librettist, and conductor, mainly resident in USA and Scotland. Taught at Curtis Inst. 1948–55. Formed lifelong friendship with the composer Samuel Barber. His tendency as composer was always towards opera and his first adult essay, Amelia Goes to the Ball, was cond. by Reiner in 1937 and later at NY Met. As with all his operas, he wrote his own lib. First outstanding success was in 1946 with The Medium, but this was eclipsed in 1950 by The Consul, dealing with the plight of refugees at the mercy of heartless bureaucracy. Amahl and the Night Visitors was the first opera to be written for TV in America. His works have achieved considerable popularity and his intention to bring opera nearer to the Broadway theatregoer has been achieved if at some cost in originality of expression. But of his dramatic effectiveness and melodic gift there can be no doubt. Founded Fest. of Two Worlds at Spoleto, It. and Charleston, USA, 1958. Wrote lib. for Barber's operas Vanessa (1957) and A Hand of Bridge (1958). Prod. Vanessa (Salzburg 1958). Works incl.:OPERAS: Amelia Goes to the Ball (Amelia al Ballo) (1934–7); The Old Maid and the Thief (1939); The Island God (1942, withdrawn); The Medium (1945); The Telephone (1946); The Consul (1949); Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951, TV); The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954); Maria Golovin (1958); The Last Savage (1963); The Labyrinth (TV, 1963); Martin's Lie (1964); Help! Help! the Globolinks (1968, children); The Most Important Man (1971); Tamu-Tamu (1973); The Hero (1976); The Egg (1976); The Trial of the Gipsy (1978); Chip and his Dog (1978); La Loca (1979); A Bride from Pluto (1981–2); The Boy Who Grew Too Fast (1982); Goya (1986); The Wedding (1988).BALLETS: Sebastian (1944); Errand into the Maze (1947); The Unicorn, the Gorgon, and the Manticore (1956).ORCH.: pf. conc. No.1 (1945), No.2 (1982); Apocalypse, sym.-poem (1951); vn. conc. (1952); triple conc. a tre (1970); Halcyon Symphony (1976); db. conc. (1983).VOCAL: The Death of the Bishop of Brindisi (1963); Landscapes and Remembrances (1976); Nocturne, sop., str. qt., hp. (1982); For the Death of Orpheus, ten., ch., orch. (1990).

Menotti, Gian Carlo (1911– ) US composer, b. Italy. His operas, in modern opera buffa style, have been most successful and include The Telephone (1947). Menotti has also composed operas specifically for television such as Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951) and Labyrinth (1963).