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.