Gian Carlo Menotti

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(b Cadegliano, 7 July 1911). American composer of Italian origin. He studied at the Milan Conservatory and the Curtis Institute (with Scalero, 1928-33), where a co-student was Samuel Barber, his close friend for whom he later wrote librettos. He won success with his comic one-act opera Amelia al ballo (1937), which was taken up by the Metin 1938 and led to an NBC commission for a radio opera, The Old Maid and the Thief (1939). A grand opera, The Island God (1942, Met), was a failure; but it was followed after the war by the chamber opera The Medium (1946), a supernatural tragedy notable for its sinister atmosphere; it was paired with his short comedy The Telephone (1947) for a Broadway run of 211 performances, 1947-8. The full-scale political melodrama The Consul (1950), in a post-Puccini verismo style, and The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954), an effective drama in the same serious style, enjoyed much success, as had the television Christmas opera Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951). His later works include more operas and orchestral pieces, including several works for children written in a direct and appealing style. More ambitious works (such as Goya, 1986), have been criticized as musically thin and too derivative. In 1958 he founded the Spoleto Festival of Two Worlds, which he directed until 1967.

works:
Operas

• Amelia al ballo (1937)
• The Old Maid and the Thief (1939)
• The Island God (1942)
• The Medium (1946)
• The Telephone (1947)
• The Consul (1950)
• Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951)
• The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954)
• Maria Golovin (1958)
• Labyrinth (1963)
• Le dernier sauvage (1963)
• Help, Help, the Globolinks! (1968)
• The Most Important Man (1971)
• Tamu-Tamu (1973)
• The Hero (1976)
• La loca (1979)
• Goya (1986)
• The Wedding (1988)

Children's operas

• Martin's Lie (1964)
• The Egg (1976)
• The Trial of the Gypsy (1978)
• Chip and his Dog (1979)
• A Bride from Pluto (1982)
• The Boy who Grew too Fast (1982)

Cantatas

• The Death of the Bishop of Brindisi (1963)
• Landscapes and Remembrances (1976)
• Muero porque no muero (1982)

Choral music

• Missa O pulchritudo (1979)

Ballets

• Sebastian (1944)
• Errand into the Maze (1947)
• The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore (1956)

Orchestral music

• Pf Conc. (1945)
• Apocalypse (1951)
• Vn Conc. (1952)
• Triple Conc. (1970)
• Fantasia, vc, orch (1976)
• Sym. no.1 (1976)
• Db Conc. (1983)

Chamber music; songs

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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).

• Period: Modern (1910-1949)
• Country: Italy
• Born: July 07, 1911 in Cadegliano, Italy
• Died: February 01, 2007 in Monte Carlo, Monaco
• Genres: Ballet, Chamber Music, Concerto, Opera

Biography

Gian Carlo Menotti was one of the most influential composers of American opera in the twentieth century. He created a large body of work, and seven of his operas and one operatic ballet are secure in the canon of contemporary opera. He wrote all of his own librettos, as well as librettos for Samuel Barber and Lukas Foss. Starting with The Medium in 1946, he directed the premieres of all his operas and went on to become an internationally acclaimed opera director. One of his most substantial achievements was the creation of the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, in 1958, and he later initiated extensions of the festival in Charleston, SC, and Melbourne, Australia. Although he is best known for his operas, his works include ballets, concerti, orchestral, and chamber music and a large body of choral music. Critical opinion of his significance as a composer and librettist is divided; his is credited with single-handedly reviving interest in opera among the American public in the mid-twentieth century, but his work also has detractors, who characterize his music as derivative and sentimental, and his dramaturgy as manipulative. The strengths of his music include the deft psychological illumination of the drama on-stage, transparent orchestration, fluent and idiomatic vocal writing, genuinely expressive recitative, and a gift for memorable melody.

Menotti was born into an affluent family in Cadegliano, Italy, in 1911. His mother Ines was a good musician who often hosted small concerts and recitals at the family villa. Gian Carlo was a musical prodigy, and by the age of 11 he had written an opera (The Death of Pierrot). When he was 14, he entered the Milan Conservatory. At 17, he departed for the United States with his mother, who, with support from family friend Arturo Toscanini, saw to his enrollment at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. There he began composition studies with Rosario Scalero and met composer Samuel Barber, who became his lover and with whom he shared a home for over 40 years. As a student, Menotti spent much of his time with the Barber family in Westchester, PA.

He graduated from Curtis in 1933 and soon began work on his first mature opera: Amelia al Ballo. It was premiered at Curtis in 1937 with such success that it was taken up by the Metropolitan Opera the following year. In 1939, NBC commissioned The Old Maid and the Thief, his first opera in English and the first opera written specifically for radio broadcast.

The only failure of Menotti's early career was The Island God (1942), commissioned by the Metropolitan Opera. During the war years, he wrote his Piano Concerto in F and a full-length ballet Sebastian. His chamber opera The Medium was premiered in May 1946 and had a run of 212 performances on Broadway during the following season, paired with his one-act comedy The Telephone. The Consul (1950), the composer's first full-length opera, considered by many to be his masterpiece, also had a long Broadway run, and it won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critic's Circle Award. The story, inspired by the plight of individuals trapped in European totalitarian states after the Second World War, was originally intended for a Hollywood film, one of several unproduced scripts the composer wrote for MGM.

NBC commissioned Menotti to write Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera created especially for television, for live broadcast on Christmas Eve 1951. It became his most popular work, has received thousands of productions, and is the most frequently performed American opera. He wrote his most ambitious opera, The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954), for Broadway, and it brought him his second New York Drama Critics' Circle Award, his second Pulitzer Prize, and a New York Music Critics' Award. His choral ballet The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore, which he described as a madrigal fable, received its premiere in 1956. His third full-length opera, Maria Golovin, was written for the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. It had a very brief run on Broadway and has not enjoyed the popularity of his earlier operas.

In 1958, Menotti and conductor Thomas Schippers established the renowned Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy. The festival consumed much of his creative energy, and although he wrote 16 more operas and many orchestral and choral works, little of the music he wrote since its founding has had critical or popular success. He stepped down as Spoleto's director in 1967, though he remained its president. In 1977 he established Spoleto USA in Charleston, SC, and served as its director until 1993. He was briefly director of the Rome Opera beginning in 1993. Menotti received the Kennedy Center Honor for lifetime achievement in the arts in 1984, and he was Musical America's Musician of the Year in 1991. ~ All Music Guide, All Music Guide