For a composer (and librettist, stage director, impresario, etc.) who has been active in most of the past century's tumult, Gian Carlo Menotti, who was never embraced by the academics or the avant-garde, has weathered artistic sea-changes in his own quiet way. He has never been swayed by fashion or fad, much the way even Stravinsky and Copland were, and because of this he has probably amassed as much critical vituperation (including direct attacks from the likes of Joseph Kerman and Igor Stravinsky) as Philip Glass.
In fact, Menotti's career can be compared to that of Philip Glass for a number of other reasons: each stuck to his own compositional "voice" once found, and both have been widely accused of "losing it" - becoming worse simply by refusing to change. Some have seen this as a lack of progress or an unwillingness to embrace their own time. Neither composer has ever held an academic post, and both have managed to make a living from their work. They are both inexorably drawn to the theatre. And were either of them to succumb to the pressure and begin to write "academic" music, it seems likely that they would be accused by the disparaging pundits of simply trying to be fashionable and by their fans of being insincere. In the court of critical opinion, it seems that neither can win.
Though Menotti has spent more than fifty years in the United States, he has not lost his Italianate nature or even his accent. He was born into an Italian family which was, he said, "...touched with madness." His mother was a talented musician who held soirées; his brother put on puppet shows and introduced him to books (Menotti is still a voracious reader). At the age of 11 he wrote two operas - The Death of Pierrot and The Little Mermaid. Mythology, far-off lands, dark places and maimed characters were all parts of these jejune efforts; all would figure in his later work.
At the newly-formed Curtis Institute in Philadelphia, Menotti learned the technical craft of composing from Rosario Scalero (a recommendation of Arturo Toscanini, a friend of Menotti's family). Yet his instinct for theater was innate. At age 22 he wrote the music and libretto for an opera buffa called Amelia Goes to the Ball, which was performed by the Metropolitan Opera when he was only 27.
The young composer went on to write the first opera composed specifically for radio, The Old Maid and the Thief (also his first libretto in English), but Menotti's next opera would prove to be his most enduring: The Medium. It was performed on Broadway (which was not unprecedented - Porgy and Bess had appeared there before), coupled with a curtain-raiser called The Telephone. Toscanini attended twice, which, at that time, meant the project was a success. The Medium is spectacular and eerie, as well as being beautiful and achingly melodic as the plot requires. One of its main characters is mute (cf. Menotti's fascination with maimed or distorted people) and the beautiful young ingenue is deeply in love with him.
Where The Medium outlines the dark, circumspect world of a fraudulent spiritual channeler and her descent into paranoia (with odd sadomasochistic overtones), The Telephone is conversely airy - a cute and romantic short opera about a man who attempts to propose to his girlfriend, but is always interrupted by the ringing of the telephone. This double bill ran for over 200 performances on Broadway, making Menotti a household name, and was subsequently fashioned into a feature-length film - a haunting masterpiece, and the first example of filmed opera.
The Consul, Menotti's next opera, is even darker than The Medium: it depicts the immigration office of a consulate in a (seemingly) far-off and dystopian world during the coldest of cold wars. Its Kafka-like setting (the creepiness of bureaucracy, the insidiousness of government, and the impersonal treatment of people) is still, sadly, quite relevant. This was another Broadway triumph for Menotti, and the winner of the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes.
Perhaps with an eye to the market, Menotti wrote a Christmas opera for television (another first), Amahl and the Night Visitors. Because it can be easily staged on a low budget by capable amateur companies, and due to its gemlike score full of singable melodies, Amahl is the most frequently performed opera in the world.
After this, Menotti wrote his most urban and most anguished piece, The Saint of Bleecker Street. This is a sadly neglected opera in the true verismo tradition, about a lovely young woman in New York's Little Italy who is blessed and cursed with the stigmata. The score, like all Menotti, is dramatic and tuneful; its opening moments are among the most powerful he ever composed.
Other operas followed - 23 in all, but none was ever greeted with quite the éclat that The Medium, The Consul, Amahl and the Night Visitors or The Saint of Bleecker Street received. There were vehicles for Beverly Sills (La Loca) and Plácido Domingo (Goya), operas to be performed in churches (The Egg and Martin's Lie) and a madrigal cycle on aging (The Unicorn, The Gorgon and the Manticore). As a stage director, a role he has taken on with great success and flare, Menotti has directed all of his own operas, as well as La bohème, Pelléas et Mélisande, Lucia di Lammermoor, and Boris Godunov among others. And he has written concert music all his life, some of which has been unjustly neglected - the Violin Concerto, Piano Concerto, and a ballet suite called Labryinth, to name just three in a rather extensive catalogue.
The prolific Menotti was the librettist for Samuel Barber's Vanessa and The Hand of Bridge and Lukas Foss' Introductions and Goodbyes; he is also a playwright (working in styles ranging from Tennessee Williams to Noel Coward), poet, author of short stories and television scripts. Indeed, he even spent some time in Hollywood as a screenwriter. As if all of this hasn't been enough to keep this indefatigable artist busy for ninety years, he is also a globally famous impresario: in 1958 Menotti founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, which expanded in 1977 to include a festival in Charleston, South Carolina.
So where does this tireless Renaissance man stand today? Some years ago Menotti was an international cosmopolitan celebrity, touring the world with productions of his operas. His parties were famous, as was his lifetime relationship with composer Samuel Barber (Menotti's companion since Curtis, and his temperamental opposite - they lived for years together in a now-legendary house in upstate New York). Now in his dotage, Menotti reflects: in recent interviews he has been waxing autumnal, speaking in broad terms about life, beauty, and music. He gets hundreds of offers for commissions per year but he accepts few; he is promising the world both an autobiography and the re-organization of his sadly disordered manuscripts. And he has spoken of composing a film opera - but for all this, we will just have to wait.
It seems there are many to follow the path Menotti created, while fewer and fewer (outside the academies) seem interested in the path of the atonalists like Milton Babbitt or Charles Wuorinen. The operas Dead Man Walking, A View from the Bridge, and The Great Gatsby (not to mention the work of Stephen Sondheim) all seem to lie in Menotti's realm - Broadway-style tonal scores by "classical" composers. But this is not "selling out," as many detractors might label it - revered composers (Mozart, Stravinsky, Weill and Ravel, to name a few) have used "popular" theater as a powerful medium. If Menotti is potentially déclassé, then so are The Rake's Progress, The Magic Flute, The Threepenny Opera and Krenek's Jonny spielt auf.
The entry on Menotti in the current issue of the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians is brief and a little terse, especially when speaking of his music. It says "Menotti's melodies are tonal, sometimes with a modal flavor, and often easily remembered." It later contextualizes him as the descendant of Gershwin and the antecedent of Andrew Lloyd Webber - a thinly veiled sideswipe in a dictionary dedicated to "serious" music. The final sentence offers the final insult: "Whether we decide to define the results as opera, music theatre or musical does not detract from the achievement of creating new audiences for one of the oldest of genres." A specious assessment of a serious artist. Reading between the lines, Menotti's accessibility (to both performer and listener) is somehow threatening to serious scholarship.
Even of late, this composer, again much like Philip Glass, has stuck to his path, pursuing the same musical style for which he became known. The Verdeher Trio recorded his recent (1996) Trio for violin, clarinet, and piano. The piece is pure Menotti, the same composer as 60 years ago: the light, frothy harmonies, the Puccini-like melodies offset by puckish (if not sometimes cheeky) dissonances. Though it is chamber music, it is still opera - the instruments function as dramatic characters, and the work is comprised not of movements but almost of scenes. It's also easy to follow, driven by melody. Menotti has never once fallen for the complexity racket brought forth by the Second Viennese School (though, in his opera The Last Savage, he does take a jab at it!). Instead, he speaks of Schubert as being the model for his complexity: a simple, direct musical surface which has beneath it an intricate emotional and musical subtlety.
Perhaps Menotti never did, or never will, recapture his early success - but he was writing for a world that was changing rapidly. Several fine composers became personae non grata to the musical community almost overnight as serialism took hold. Menotti never stopped or disappeared; times simply changed and he refused to give in. He has written a staggering number of operas since his big successes, most of them geared for children, but none with the power of his earlier work. Yet rather than descend into senescent self-mockery, he has chosen to work in relative seclusion, rather like a caretaker for his aesthetic and a philosopher for his ideas.
And still he works, composing (at this writing) a piano concerto for Jean-Yves Thibaudet. He is not currently at work on another opera, and when questioned about this Menotti says, "... I feel that you must compose when you have to compose, and not just when you want to. Unless it's a necessity, it's not worth trying. It's a gift from God, and if God wants you to compose he tells you. At the moment, God isn't paying me much attention." Odd words from such a prolific, tenacious and influential artist - one who, reflecting on an astonishing career, is perhaps more troubled than he ought to be. In the words of The Medium's Madam Flora: "If there is nothing to be afraid of, than why am I afraid of this nothingness?" Why indeed?
© andante Corp. July 2001. All rights reserved.
