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Program notes and cast biographies for
Amahl and the Night Visitors
Dec. 1 & 2, 2007

 

Program notes

Gian Carlo Menotti, 1911 to 2007

Gian Carlo Menotti wrote the one-act opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, for the NBC television network, which broadcast the performance for the first time on Christmas Eve in 1951.

"Amahl" is the best-known of Menotti's 25 operas. The inspiration came from the Hieronymous Bosch painting, "The Adoration of the Magi." The opera tells the Christmas story from the view of a widow and her crippled son, living in poverty, and the miraculous visit to their home of the three kings, who are following the star towards Bethlehem.

The touching story of the "Night Visitors" plays on a theme repeated in many of Menotti's other works: the need to reconcile simple faith with the ambiguities of religion.

Gian Carlo Menotti was raised in a prosperous merchant family in northern Italy. Music lessons and evening musicales with his seven siblings developed his creativity, and the young Menotti wrote his first opera at the age of 11. Two years later, the family moved to Milan, where Gian Carlo attended the Verdi Conservatory of Music for three years.

In 1928, on the strength of a recommendation from Arturo Toscanini, the great conductor and a family friend, Menotti came to America and enrolled at the new Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia. There, he studied under Rosario Scalero, and met another young composer, Samuel Barber, who became his close companion and lifelong friend.

Menotti's career launched in 1937 with his first professional opera, Amelia Goes to the Ball, performed at the Metropolitan Opera in 1938.

The Consul, Menotti's first full-length work, won the Pulitzer Prize and the New York Drama Critics Circle award as the best musical play of the year in 1954. The Saint of Bleeker Street, which opened on Broadway for the 1954-55 season, earned Menotti his second Pulitzer.

Menotti founded and directed the Festival of Two Worlds, a long-running summer music festival that began in 1958 in Spoleto, Italy. In 1977, he helped establish an American arm of Spoleto in Charleston, S.C., and continued a close involvement with the festival for 16 years. He later directed the Rome Opera.

In 1984, Menotti was awarded the Kennedy Center Honor for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts. In 1991, Musical America named Menotti “Musician of the Year,” starting a year of worldwide in honor of his 80th birthday.

Menotti died on Feb. 1, 2007, at his home in Monaco.

Material for this biography came from an essay by Paul Wittke posted on the website of G. Schirmer Inc. Associated Music Publishers, which publishes Menotti’s works, and from the New York Times obituary for Mr. Menotti written by Bernard Holland.

About the singers and director

Corbin Grainger • Amahl

Corbin is an 8th grade student at Basalt Middle School. He started singing in the school choir in 7th grade, when his teacher noted that he had a good singing voice. With that encouragement, his parents enrolled him in voice lessons. He has studied under Katie Hone and Paul Dankers, and attended the Aspen Acting Academy, where he was part of the cast for the musical “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.”

This is Corbin's first appearance with Symphony in the Valley. He calls this chance to have a lead role in an opera backed by a symphony orchestra "a dream come true."

Maureen Jackson • Mother

Maureen Jackson has been singing for as long as she can remember. She started voice lessons at age 12, and later earned a bachelor's degree in music from the University of Miami and a master's in music from the University of Colorado. Ms. Jackson also holds a real estate license and is the office manager for The Property Shop in Glenwood Springs.

In Philadelphia, she sang the role of Mabel in The Pirates of Penzance with the Philly Pops under conductor Peter Nero, and she performed at the Crystal Palace in Aspen for two seasons.

Of the opera, "Amahl," she says, "The music is challenging and multi-layered." She is particularly inspired by a major theme in the story: the power of a selfless act.

Paul Dankers • King Kaspar (tenor) and Vocal Director

Paul Dankers is the music director at the Snowmass Chapel in Snowmass Village. He holds a bachelor's degree in choral music from the University of Wisconsin at Eau Claire and a master's degree in choral music education from the University of Southern Mississippi.

He started playing the piano by ear as a small child, using a piano in the basement of his church, and began taking lessons in third grade. He also plays the flute.

Mr. Dankers sang the solo tenor role in Symphony in the Valley's May 2007 production of Carmina Burana, and sang the solo "O Holy Night" at the December 2006 concert. He also sings with the Aspen Choral Society, with the Aspen Chapel Choir and played the lead role in Aspen Community Theatre's 2006 production of Pippin.

King Melchior • Scott MacCracken (baritone)

Scott MacCracken started his singing career as a third grader who was invited to join the fourth grade choir. He holds a bachelor's degree in vocal performance from Capital University in Columbus, Ohio.

This is his fifth appearance with Symphony in the Valley, most recently singing the solo baritone role for the May production of Carmina Burana.

Mr. MacCracken has also performed with the Aspen Music Festival, Broadway Players, Aspen Community Theatre, Crested Butte Music Festival, Colorado Mountain College Center for Excellence in the Arts and the Steamboat Springs Music Festival.

He is the manager and buyer for the Local Spirits Wine Shop in Aspen.

King Balthazar • Lee Sullivan (bass)

Lee Sullivan started singing seriously at the age of 30, and studies under Julie Paxton of Aspen. By profession, he is a ranch hand and land steward, and holds a bachelor’s degree in animal science from Middle Tennessee State University.

Mr. Sullivan is a longtime member of the Aspen Community Chorus and has sung with the choirs at Crossroads Church and The AspenChapel. He appeared in singing roles for numerous Aspen Community Theatre productions, and sang the lead role in the 1999 Defiance Community Players production of Meet Me in St. Louis.

This is his second performance with Symphony in Valley, after singing in the chorus for the February 2000 production of 100 Years of Broadway.

In Amahl, he is intrigued by the way Menotti "grafted lyrical phrases to harmonies I've never sung before." And he notes that "the stage never fails to uphold the presence of the miraculous in human circumstance."

John Goss • Director

John Goss has performed in more than 125 professional and amateur theater productions throughout the West and has worked with every theater group in the Roaring Fork Valley. He has directed or choreographed many shows, but this is his first experience directing an opera.

Mr. Goss performed as a soloist for the orchestra's Symphony Swing concerts in 2004 and 2005, and most recently played El Gallo in the Thunder River Theatre production of The Fantasticks. He also performs with an a capella doo-wop group, The Altitones.

Mr. Goss is a professional painter. This past summer he married Symphony in the Valley's harpist, Elise Helmke.


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