Menotti wrote all the librettos for his operas and directed many productions, believing opera was inseparable from the libretto and music from the plot.
Composition History
The Telephone, a comic opera, was composed in a few weeks to serve as a light-hearted counterweight to The Medium, completing an evening's program.
Composer's Artistic Vision
Gian Carlo Menotti, the composer, proudly described himself as a conservative composer, with an eclectic idiom influenced by figures like Puccini, Mussorgsky, Debussy, and Stravinsky.
Composition History
The opera The Medium was commissioned by the Alice Ditson Fund and premiered in 1946 at Columbia University's Brander Matthews Theater.
Composer Biography
Gian Carlo Menotti, the composer, wrote verse at age seven and composed two operas by age eleven, based on Hans Christian Andersen tales.
Composer Biography
Arturo Toscanini helped Gian Carlo Menotti gain admission to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia when Menotti moved to the United States.
Compositional Technique
In The Telephone, the telephone itself acts as a character, a rival to the man in love, with its 'voice' expressed by ringing piano arpeggios and desperate sounds.
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