[Met Performance] CID:123180

Metropolitan Opera Premiere, New Production, American Opera

Amelia Goes to the Ball
Elektra
Metropolitan Opera House, Thu, March 3, 1938


In English



Amelia Goes to the Ball (1)
Gian Carlo Menotti | Gian Carlo Menotti
Amelia
Muriel Dickson

Lover
Mario Chamlee

Husband
John Brownlee

Friend
Helen Olheim

Chief of Police
Norman Cordon

Cook
Lucielle Browning

Maid
Charlotte Symons


Conductor
Ettore Panizza


Director
Leopold Sachse

Set Designer
Donald Oenslager

Composer
Gian Carlo Menotti


Elektra (11)
Richard Strauss | Hugo von Hofmannsthal
Elektra
Rose Pauly

Chrysothemis
Irene Jessner

Klytämnestra
Enid Szánthó

Orest
Friedrich Schorr

Aegisth
Paul Althouse

Overseer
Dorothee Manski

Serving Woman
Lucielle Browning

Serving Woman
Doris Doe

Serving Woman
Marita Farell

Serving Woman
Helen Olheim

Serving Woman
Thelma Votipka

Confidant
Anna Kaskas

Trainbearer
Irra Petina

Young Servant
Karl Laufkötter

Old Servant
Arnold Gabor

Guardian
Norman Cordon


Conductor
Erich Leinsdorf


Gian Carlo Menotti



Translation by George Mead
Original title: Amelia al Ballo.
Amelia Goes to the Ball received four performances this season.
ELEKTRA {11}

Review 1:

Review by Pitts Sanborn in the New York World-Telegram

It has taken "Amelia al Ballo" less than a year to bring its merry self to the august stage of the Metropolitan Opera House. The world premiere of Gian Carlo Menotti's one-act opera buffa occurred in English at the Philadelphia Academy of Music on April 1, 1937, sponsored by the Curtis Institute of Music. Now, by all the signs "Amelia", which last night served "Elektra" as curtain-raiser, is in for a prosperous Metropolitan career.

[The] plot, slight as it is, supplies enough of lively incident to keep something always brewing on the stage. And it also furnishes the reason-for-being of a rather delightful opera score. But to label "Amelia" in pride and thanksgiving an American opera seems to be unjustifiable. True, Mr. Menotti studied at the Curtis Institute and wrote the work-he is his own librettist-in this country. Yet he composed the voice parts to Italian words (which are not always easily and aptly rendered in George Mead's English version) and the score is distinctly in the Italian tradition, in spite of the composer's undissembled acquaintance with Richard Strauss, "Auld Lang Syne", and other non-Italian matters.

It is a score conceived in the great comic line of "Le Nozze di Figaro", "Il Matrimonio Segreto", "Il Barbiere di Siviglia", "Don Pasquale", and "Falstaff", as is the case of these masterpieces the orchestra maintains a constant and relishing commentary on the action. The living composer with whose work "Amelia" has the closest affinity is obviously Wolf-Ferrari. Mr. Menotti, however, is less assimilative than Wolf-Ferrari became in "L'Amore Medico", though he too can boast of a serviceable memory, and now and then the effervescent Menotti vintage is momentarily tinctured with lukewarm vanilla soda. To make an end of it all, "Amelia" is an agreeable example of modern Italian opera, vivacious and tuneful, sung in English. American it is not, except through geographical accident.

Aside from the unimportrant and now shabby set lent by the Curtis Institute, the production at the Metropolitan calls for little but praise. Muriel Dickson makes a wholly charming Amelia. John Brownlee portrays the husband with fine skill. Mario Chamlee, embodying the lover, is an expert rope-slider and a doughty fellow with his fists, as well as the possessor of a voice. As the Chief of Police Norman Cordon is quite superb. Ettore Panizza kept the orchestra fizzling like champagne. A capacity audience acclaimed the work , and the youthful composer came before the curtain with the principal artists to bow.

[The production of Amelia Goes to the Ball was borrowed from the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia.]



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