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Reissue Producer and Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn.

The reception for the first television broadcast of Menotti’s opera Amahl and the Night Visitors (also available in an acclaimed modern recording on Naxos 8669019) was overwhelming: an estimated five million viewers, the NBC switchboard jammed with congratulatory calls and an unprecedented front-page review in The New York Times. Quickly recorded for RCA Victor, the album became a best-seller and the opera remains a Christmas evergreen, brimming with memorable tunes for both soloists and chorus. Set in 17th-century Venice, Menotti’s ballet Sebastian, the concert suite from which is heard here, was applauded by The New York Times as an ‘unblushing melodrama... brilliantly effective’.

Menotti’s powerful romantic opera Maria Golovin explores the issues of love and jealousy. It premiered in Brussels in 1958, transferring to Broadway toward the end of the year, but closed after only five performances. The composer himself described it as ‘his unlucky work’. Between these two dates RCA recorded the work in Rome with an outstanding cast of Menotti regulars, such as Patricia Neway, and brilliant newcomers like Richard Cross. The LP is rare and this is its first reissue in 50 years. Another rarity is Tossy Spivakovsky’s still-unequalled 1954 performance of the Violin Concerto, which is filled with memorable themes and is a superb vehicle for the solo violin.

Reissue Producer and Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn

This 2-CD set is the first in a series devoted to Gian Carlo Menotti’s compositions on the occasion of his centenary in 2011. The recordings will include several which have never before appeared on CD, and some that have not been available in any form for nearly fifty years.

Menotti’s first full-length opera, The Consul, here make its CD début.

The pairing of the comic opera The Telephone with the sinister music-drama The Medium proved to be a big hit for composer Gian Carlo Menotti when they opened together on Broadway in 1947. The double bill ran for over 200 performances, and enjoyed similar success in London during 1948. This original 1947 cast recording of The Medium, made by the American Columbia company, was first released in the UK in 1961, when The Gramophone wrote enthusiastically “its effectiveness as a musical work for the stage is beyond argument”.

Reissue Producer and Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn

Reissue Producer and Restoration Engineer: Mark Obert-Thorn

Hailed as ‘the best new opera since Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess’, Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Saint of Bleecker Street won the Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Drama Critics Circle award for Best Musical. Its underlying themes of immigrant life and religious fervour remain topical today. The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore is part masque, part ballet and part chamber music. It presents three stages in the life of an eccentric poet, symbolised by the allegorical animals of the title.

It is a truism that each evening in the theatre is a unique event that cannot be repeated, even as part of a run of performances. One such exceptional performance was the first of three concert performances of Saverio

Mercadante's rarely performed Il Giuramento, threatened with cancellation when the tenor scheduled to sing the main role fell ill and it seemed impossible to find a replacement.

In the event, Plácido Domingo sang the part flawlessly after only a day in which to learn the role, thereby underscoring what, even then, was the exceptional position that he has maintained in the operatic world ever since.