Menotti, Gian Carlo, << muh NAHT ee, jahn KAHR loh >> (1911-2007), an American composer, wrote some of the most popular operas of the mid-1900’s. Unlike most composers, he also wrote the librettos (words) for his operas and staged most of their premieres. He won the 1950 Pulitzer Prize for music for The Consul (1950) and the 1955 prize for The Saint of Bleecker Street (1954).
Menotti’s first performed opera, Amelia Goes to the Ball, was staged in 1938 at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1947, his tragedy The Medium (1946) and comedy The Telephone (1947) had long runs on Broadway. Menotti’s next successes were The Consul, about political refugees in Europe, and The Saint of Bleecker Street, about life in New York City’s Italian section. He wrote Amahl and the Night Visitors, perhaps his best-known opera, for television in 1951. Based on the story of the Three Wise Men, it has been rerun often at Christmas. His later works include the operas for children Help, Help,The Globolinks (1968) and The Singing Child (1993), as well as such adult operas as La Loca (1979) and Goya (1986). Menotti also composed chamber music, songs, and ballets. In addition, he wrote the librettos for operas by other composers, such as Vanessa (1958) by Samuel Barber, which won the 1958 Pulitzer Prize for music.
Menotti was born on July 7, 1911, in Cadegliano, near Milan, Italy, and moved to the United States in 1928. In 1958, he founded the Festival of Two Worlds, an international festival of the arts held in Spoleto, Italy. In 1977, Menotti founded a similar yearly festival, Spoleto Festival U.S.A., in Charleston, South Carolina, which he directed until he resigned in 1993. Menotti died on Feb. 1, 2007.
