| The Boy Who Grew Too Fast | |
|---|---|
| Opera for young people by Gian Carlo Menotti | |
 The composer in 1944 | |
| Librettist | Menotti |
| Language | English |
| Premiere | |
The Boy Who Grew Too Fast is a "one-act opera for young people" with music and libretto by Gian-Carlo Menotti. It was first performed by OperaDelaware at the Grand Opera House in Wilmington, Delaware, on September 24, 1982.
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, (Conductor: ) |
|---|---|---|
| Conductor | soprano | Evelyn Swensson |
| Miss Hope | soprano | Denise Coffey |
| Poponel | tenor | Phillip Peterson |
| Mrs. Skosvodmonit, Poponel's mother | mezzo-soprano | Sara Hagopian |
| Dr. Shrinck | tenor | Frank Reynolds |
| Mad Dog, a terrorist | bass-baritone | Alan Wagner |
| Nurse Proctor | mezzo-soprano | Joy Vandever |
| Little Poponel | treble | |
| Lizzy Spender | Girl soprano | Miriam Bennett |
| Police Officer | non-singing | |
| Children (treble chorus) | ||
Thomas Schippers was an American conductor. He was highly regarded for his work in opera.
Maria Golovin is an English language opera in three acts by Gian Carlo Menotti. It is through-composed and centers on a romantic encounter between a blind recluse named Donato and the title character, a married woman living in a European country a few years after a war. The work was commissioned by Peter Herman Adler of the NBC Opera Theatre.
The Consul is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti, his first full-length opera.
The Festival dei Due Mondi(Festival of the Two Worlds) is an annual summer music and opera festival held each June to early July in Spoleto, Italy, since its founding by composer Gian Carlo Menotti in 1958. It features a vast array of concerts, opera, dance, drama, visual arts and roundtable discussions on science.
Francis "Chip" Menotti is an actor and former figure skater who was the president and artistic director of Festival dei Due Mondi.
Rosemary Kuhlmann was an American operatic mezzo-soprano and Broadway musical actress best known for originating the role of the Mother in Gian Carlo Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera commissioned for television. Kuhlmann portrayed the role on the annual live NBC broadcast of the production from 1951 through 1962.
Pittsburgh Festival Opera (PFO), formerly Opera Theater of Pittsburgh, is a professional American opera company based in Pittsburgh's university and museum district. Pittsburgh Festival Opera performs at non-traditional venues around the city.
Marie Powers (1902–1973) was an American contralto who was best known for her performance as Madame Flora in Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Medium, a role that she played on stage, screen and television.
The Island God is a one-act opera by Gian Carlo Menotti with a libretto by the composer. It was first performed on February 20, 1942, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.
Amelia al ballo is a one-act opera buffa by Gian Carlo Menotti, who set his own Italian libretto. Composed during 1936 when Menotti was in his mid-twenties, it was the composer's first mature opera and first critical success. The opera recounts a series of farcical events as a young Italian socialite overcomes obstacles to her attendance at the first ball of the season.
The Last Savage is an opera in three acts by composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Menotti wrote his own libretto, originally in the Italian language. The opera was translated into French by Jean-Pierre Marty for the work's first (private) performance at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 21 October 1963, followed the next day by the public premiere. George Mead translated the work into English for the opera's American premiere at the Metropolitan Opera the following year.
The Hero is a two-act opera by Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti commissioned by the Opera Company of Philadelphia, to celebrate the United States Bicentennial. The work premiered at the Philadelphia Academy of Music on June 1, 1976. At this point of his career, Menotti's style of composition, which rejected the avant-garde, was out of favor with the classical music world. Time stated in its review of the opera, "Most of Menotti's music is passable Puccini: melodic, easy to take—and totally beside the point in 1976."
The NBC Opera Theatre was an American opera company operated by the National Broadcasting Company from 1949 to 1964. The company was established specifically for the purpose of televising both established and new operas for television in English. Additionally, the company also gave live theatrical presentations of operas, sponsoring several touring productions in the United States and mounting works on Broadway.
Labyrinth is an opera in one act by composer Gian Carlo Menotti. The work was commissioned for television by the NBC Opera Theatre and uses an English language libretto by the composer. Unlike Menotti's previous television operas, such as Amahl and the Night Visitors, this opera was written with no intention of being moved to live stage performance later. Menotti intended for this work to utilize the special effects unique to television which could not be recreated in live theatre. As a result, NBC's television production of the opera was the only performance the work had received until Ventura College mounted a production in June of 2020, directed by Brent Wilson. After its March 3, 1963 broadcast the opera was mainly criticized by the press for its trite use of allegory and music which rejected the avant-garde in favour of romanticism. Critic Harold C. Schonberg stated in his review in The New York Times that,
"Menotti falls back on the procedures he has always used: the scraps of canonic imitation, the stretches of parlando, the Puccini like melodies, the banal waltz themes... [It] ended up an allegory that had all the dimension of a Mobius strip: an example of slick television and cinema of the 1960s wedded pretty much to music of the 1890s... On the whole Labyrinth is one of the thinnest musical concoctions Menotti has ever put together.
Help, Help, the Globolinks! is an opera in four scenes by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by the Hamburg State Opera and first performed as Hilfe, Hilfe, die Globolinks! in a German translation by Kurt Honolka on December 21, 1968, in a double bill with Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors. The opera had its English language premiere on August 1, 1969, in the United States at the Santa Fe Opera in a double bill with Igor Stravinsky's The Nightingale. Both premiere productions were directed by the composer. Many of the cast members from the Santa Fe production reprised their roles for the work's New York debut at the New York City Opera in December 1969.
David Aiken was an American operatic baritone, opera director, and United States Army Air Forces officer. He was particularly associated with the works of Gian Carlo Menotti, and is best remembered for creating the role of King Melchior in the world premiere of Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors.
The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore or The Three Sundays of a Poet is a "madrigal fable" for chorus, ten dancers and nine instruments with music and original libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti. Based on the 16th-century Italian madrigal comedy genre, it consists of a prologue and 12 madrigals which tell a continuous story, interspersed with six musical interludes. The unicorn, gorgon, and manticore in the title are allegories for three stages in the life of the story's protagonist, a strange poet who keeps the mythical creatures as pets. The work premiered in Washington D.C. at the Library of Congress Coolidge Auditorium on October 19, 1956.
Martin's Lie is a chamber opera in one act with music and an English language libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti. Commissioned by CBS, it was Menotti's third opera for television after Amahl and the Night Visitors and Labyrinth. Although not initially conceived as a work for the stage, the opera premiered in a live theatrical performance on 3 June 1964 at the Bristol Cathedral for the opening of the 17th annual Bath International Music Festival. The opera was subsequently filmed with the same cast for television under the direction of Kirk Browning with Julie Andrews serving as host. The production used sets and costumes by designer Anthony Powell, and was broadcast nationally by CBS for the opera's United States television premiere on 30 May 1965.
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer, librettist, director, and playwright who is primarily known for his output of 25 operas. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. One of the most frequently performed opera composers of the 20th century, his most successful works were written in the 1940s and 1950s. Highly influenced by Giacomo Puccini and Modest Mussorgsky, Menotti further developed the verismo tradition of opera in the post-World War II era. Rejecting atonality and the aesthetic of the Second Viennese School, Menotti's music is characterized by expressive lyricism which carefully sets language to natural rhythms in ways that highlight textual meaning and underscore dramatic intent.
The Most Important Man is an opera in three acts with music and libretto by Gian Carlo Menotti. Commissioned by Julius Rudel for the New York City Opera, the work premiered at Lincoln Center in 1971 in a production directed by Menotti with sets designed by Oliver Smith and costumes by Frank Thompson. An opera focusing on racial tensions in Africa with a central black hero, the work was poorly received by most critics. However, Menotti personally believed that this was one of his best operas on par with The Consul and The Saint of Bleecker Street. The work's first European performance was at the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi in Trieste, Italy, on January 17, 1972. The opera uses Menotti's characteristic lyrical style which is inspired by Puccini and the Italian verismo opera tradition. In this work he infuses African percussion and rhythms, much in the way Puccini infused Asian inspired melodies and musical practices into his opera Madama Butterfly.
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