Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by NBC and first performed on December 24, 1951 in New York City, at NBC studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast live on television as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. It was the first opera specifically composed for television in America. The opera is now a popular Chri...
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Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer. It was commissioned by NBC and first performed on December 24, 1951 in New York City, at NBC studio 8H in Rockefeller Center, where it was broadcast live on television as the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame. It was the first opera specifically composed for television in America. The opera is now a popular Christmas classic.
Menotti had been commissioned by Peter Herman Adler, director of NBC's new opera programing, to write the first opera for television eighteen months before it was to be broadcast, but was having trouble finding a subject about which to write. One day, while walking through the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he happened to see The Adoration of the Magi by Hieronymus Bosch and knew he had found his inspiration. There was so little time left before the premiere, that the singers had little time to rehearse, receiving the...
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