Menotti has told us of how Amahl came to be written.

This is an opera for children because it tries to recapture my own childhood. You see, when I was a child I lived in Italy, ... and in Italy we have no Santa Claus. I suppose that Santa Claus is much too busy with American children to be able to handle Italian children as well. Our gifts were brought to us by the Three Kings instead.

I actually never met the Three Kings — it didn't matter how hard my little brother and I tried to keep awake at night to catch a glimpse of the Three Royal Visitors, we would always fall asleep just before they arrived. But I do remember hearing them. I remember the weird cadence of their song in the dark distance; I remember the brittle sound of the camels' hooves crushing the frozen snow; and I remember the mysterious tinkling of their silver bridles.

My favorite king was King Melchior, because he was the oldest and had a long white beard. My brother's favorite was King Kaspar. He insisted that this king was a little crazy and quite deaf. I don't know why he was so positive about his being deaf. I suspect it was because dear King Kaspar never brought him all the gifts he requested. He was also rather puzzled by the fact that King Kaspar carried the myrrh, which appeared to him as a rather eccentric gift, for he never quite understood what the word meant.

To these Three Kings I mainly owe the happy Christmas seasons of my childhood, and I should have remained very grateful to them. Instead, I came to America and soon forgot all about them, for here at Christmastime one sees so many Santa Clauses scattered all over town. Then there is the big Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza, the elaborate toy windows on Fifth Avenue, the one-hundred-voice choir in Grand Central Station, the innumerable Christmas carols on radio and television — and all these things made me forget the three dear old Kings of my own childhood.

[Then], in 1951 I found myself in serious difficulty. I had been commissioned by the National Broadcasting Company to write an opera for television, with Christmas as a deadline, and I simply didn't have one idea in my head.

One November afternoon as I was walking rather gloomily through the rooms of the Metropolitan Museum, I chanced to stop in front of the Adoration of the Kings by Hieronymus Bosch, and as I was looking at it, suddenly I heard again ... the weird song of the Three Kings. I then realized they had come back to me and had brought me a gift.

Menotti felt the old intensity welling up inside and started thinking about miracles of faith, and of his own childhood lameness which was cured when he was four. As he stood there, he knew he had the subject for his seventh opera. The work was created and produced in less than two months, and we can hear those memories playing throughout the score.

Menotti himself directed the first performance and made sure it could also be performed on a stage. He insisted Amahl should not be angelic: "I like my Amahl to be a naughty little boy — a little devil. The character should be impish. He tells lies, he is disobedient." The television director Kirk Browning, now known for the PBS series Live From Lincoln Center, was behind the cameras. Thomas Schippers conducted.

Although no audience was present in the studio, Arturo Toscanini had looked in on rehearsals and been moved to tears. No one at the time realized what Amahl would become. It made history! It was the first color program ever on TV, it was the first opera written for TV, it was the first program on the Hallmark Hall of Fame, and it was presented by Sarah Churchill, the daughter of Sir Winston. It was reviewed on the first page of The New York Times.

This week a Christmas Eve audience watched the world première of Amahl and the Night Visitors on the largest TV hookup (35 stations!) that NBC has ever strung together for opera. Like most Menotti works, Amahl is a one-man show — music, libretto and stage direction by the composer. The story is a simple Menotti mixture of melodrama and pathos, with more than enough invention to fill out 50 minutes. The music is distinctively Menottian — sometimes obvious but always packed with powerful melodic appeal. Composing for a twelve-year-old star was a problem. One choice was to keep all the singing roles simple and "wide-eyed"; another was to keep the boy's part easy, the others more florid. Menotti chose middle ground, and although he has some difficult singing (and acting) to do, curly-haired and clear-voiced little Chet Allen of Princeton's Columbus Boychoir carries it off beautifully.

The manuscript is lost. It was auctioned to raise money for the Festival of Two Worlds, but later disappeared. The recording of the original performance on Dec. 24, 1951 is also lost. An annual Christmas tradition on NBC from 1951 to 1966, in the six years from 1966 to 1972 Amahl had 2187 performances, twice any other opera. In 1969 the Publisher G. Schirmer confirmed 70% of its mail order business was for Amahl. Today Schirmer accounts a holiday-season tally of 500 performances as merely business as usual. It has been heard in over forty languages and as far away as India, Japan and Australia. Suitable for amateur performers, Caroline Kennedy sang one of the kings at school in an all-girl cast. The composer attended with her mother, Jackie.

Return to Amahl Home Page

Revised November 2007
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