Everything music from a perspective of a public
school music teacher with subject integration
(especially art, history, and literature) as a focus
to help teach the Common Core Curriculum.
Showing posts with label Amahl and the Night Visitors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Amahl and the Night Visitors. Show all posts
Perhaps the most renowned composer of our time Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007) was born in Cadegliano, Italy, one of ten children of a well to do family. Learning the basics of music from his mother, he actually wrote his first opera at age eleven. He then studied at the prestigious Milan Conservatory
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHgCFpgUIQk It was one of the earliest operas composed specifically for performance on the radio. The opera was premiered on NBC on April 22, 1939, and was first staged in Philadelphia on February 11, 1941. and "The Island God."
a chamber opera (one requiring fewer singers and a smaller orchestra) that is a tragedy about a medium. Menotti also wrote the libretto for famed composer Samuel Barber's
"What will the critics write when I die? I really don't know. And I hope I'll have better things to do than read the newspapers, then. When I was alive, they wrote all kinds of things. Better yet, the Italian critics mostly wrote that I am not a contemporary composer. Because most critics want to be the ones who decide everything about art, about time, about life itself. Success doesn't count; no, it even makes you suspect." "What is fame? Years ago I had to drive from Spoleto to my hometown, Cadegliano, in the North. We were driving too fast, and close to Varese we were stopped by the police. I didn't have my driving license. I'm Gian Carlo Menotti, I said. Who? I was finally recognized by the lady who ran a bakery in my home town. She didn't know my work, she just remembered me as my momma's son." "My secret? How to age gracefully? Never commit dates to memory, especially historical ones. I don't know when Cristoforo Colombo discovered America, but I know America very well -- it's way more important. Second: I love flowers, their colors and scents; but I don't know their names. Third: call the doctor only in cases of real emergency." "I have to walk with a cane now: when I was young, the upper part of my body didn't work that well, the lower part instead worked great. Now that I'm 90, it's the other way around." "I've always felt guilty, that I wasn't doing enough for others. And I've felt a constant terror, the terror to be useless... If I had Verdi's gift, the abilty to inspire the masses with music, I'd be satisfied. But I don't have that gift, I am aware of my own limitations, and I try to do something different. See, art nowadays is an exotic plant that humanity does not recognize, and does not understand. The artist, an ornament to society, not an essential part of it. One writes, but for whom?"
