Menotti: Amahl And The Night Visitors

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 Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera written for television, enjoys more than five hundred performances annually around the world and is immensely popular with amateur groups.

A crippled boy, Amahl, and his mother are visited by the three Kings who seek the newborn Jesus. Deciding to give his crutch to the Christ child, he is miraculously healed, and joyfully accompanies the Kings to give thanks.

Sung in English, brimming with tuneful melodies for both soloists and chorus, the opera is a humorous and poignant Christmas classic beloved by people of all ages.

Amahl and the Night Visitors is a perennial Christmas classic that has little competition on CD. There is no recorded competition for My Christmas.

“Only one of Menotti’s operas can truly be said to have achieved lasting popularity: “Amahl and the Night Visitors,” a brief, modest work created for NBC television and first performed in a live broadcast on Christmas Eve in 1951…..The work’s appeal is obvious. Menotti’s music is attractive and unfailingly lyrical.” The New York Times

“Conductor Alastair Willis conjures up sterling support for the soloists from members of the Chicago and Nashville Symphony Choruses and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.” Classical Lost and Found

This TER recording, recorded in the presence of Menotti himself, captures The Royal Opera House’s 1986 London production. The production was directed by Menotti, starred Donald Maxwell, Lorna Haywood, John Dobson, Curtis Watson, and featured what Menotti saw as the ‘marvellous’ performance of James Rainbird as Amahl. Alongside these, the presence of the Internationally acclaimed ROH Chorus and Orchestra, make this a true classic of the TER catalogue.