Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951 Schippers, Allen / @1951 Menotti), American (TV) production, video recording, world premiere (opera)
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Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951) is an American TV production & video recording, the world premiere of Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951 Menotti), opera, conducted by Thomas Schippers, with Gian Carlo Menotti (stage director) and Kirk Browning (film director).
Abstract
The first opera specifically composed for television in America was broadcast on 24 December 1951, at the NBC studios.
Composer Gian Carlo Menotti directed himself the production and briefly introduced it. He could count on two exceptional collaborators: conductor Thomas Schippers and film director Kirk Browning.
As protagonists, Menotti selected Rosemary Kuhlmann, who had appeared in The Consul, and 12-year-old Chet Allen, a boy soprano with the famed Columbus Boychoir (now known as the American Boychoir) of Princeton, NJ. Andrew McKinley, David Aitken, Leon Lisher and Frances Monachino completed the cast
The live broadcast was a smashing success. It was estimated that the audience exceeded five million people. Nobody had ever seen an opera like that, on television, where the facial expression of the singers was as important as their singing. The response was enthusiastic. In January the show was recorded and released on vinyl, and by public demand was repeated on TV on Eastern Sunday (13 April 1952), with the same cast.
In just a few months, Amahl had became a popular Christmas classic, widely performed on stage and television.
For several years it was assumed that the film (kinescope) of the original telecast had been lost, but a copy was found, transferred to video, and is now available at The Paley Center for Media (formerly The Museum of Television & Radio) and online at the Museum of Broadcast Communications.
Original cast
- Chet Allen = Amahl
- Rosemary Kuhlmann = The Mother
- Andrew McKinley = Caspar
- David Aiken = Melchior
- Leon Lishner = Balthazar
- Francis Monachino = The Page
- The NBC Symphony Orchestra
Production
TV premiere: New York, NBC (National Broadcasting Company), 24 dicembre 1951.
External links
- 1951
- Fiction--1950s
- Fiction--English
- Cinema--1950s
- Cinema--American
- Music--1950s
- Music--American
- TV Films
- English language--1950s
- Christian Origins Studies--1950s
- Christian Origins Studies--English
- Christian Origins Studies--Fiction
- Nativity of Jesus (subject)
- Journey of the Magi (event)
- Magi--music (subject)
- Amahl--music (subject)
- Magi--cinema (subject)
- Amahl--cinema (subject)