MENOTTI: Amelia al Ballo; The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore.(Brief Article)(Review)

MENOTTI: Amelia al Ballo; The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore [] Carosio, Amadini, Zanolli, Mazzoni; Prandelli, Panerai, Campi; Orchestra and Chorus of La Scala, Milan, Sanzogno. Text and (poetic) translation (Amelia). Instrumental Ensemble, Schippers (Unicorn). Testament SBT-1179 (Harmonia Mundi, dist.)

Gian Carlo Menotti never has been a composer interested in trends, either as a setter or as a follower. His goal has been to compose enduring, entertaining pieces, and his role as a man of the theater has extended well beyond composing to writing librettos, producing, directing and founding and administering international festivals. The style of the music he has created seems to have been dictated by the nature of each piece and has its roots in a strong identification with the music of his national predecessors. Menotti's apparent love of Puccini is perhaps nowhere more evident than in his first great success, the one-act comic opera Amelia al Ballo, which premiered at the Academy of Music in Philadelphia in English as Amelia Goes to the Ball when the composer was only twenty-five.

So favorable was the response to Amelia that it was given the following year (1938) at the Met, again in an English translation of the composer's Italian libretto, and in San Remo in its original Italian. It is this version that was presented at La Scala in 1954 -- and recorded at the time of its Scala premiere, with the original Scala cast members, for EMI. Collectors of LPs will recall the one-disc boxed set as part of the distinguished line of Angel albums that bore the imprimatur of La Scala, a line whose flagship recordings were the Callas/di Stefano/Gobbi operas.

In its way, this Amelia al Ballo is no less captivating than the other La Scala recordings of the period, even if the opera in question is not so familiar today as those with which it shared the emblem. Not only is the opera itself delightful, but the singers are marvelous; fresh and spontaneous, they brought to the studio the immediacy of having just performed their roles live. This factor counted for a lot, even back then when it was customary for artists to record primarily roles for which they were celebrated in the ...