One of the most beautifully articulated children’s operas in the repertoire composed in the last century is Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors; one of the numerous prestigious productions in the 2018 edition of the ŻiguŻajg International Arts Festival for Children and Young people.
The production, a collaboration between Teatru Manoel and ŻiguŻajg, stars up-and-coming performers Jamie Busuttil Griffin and Gianluca Abdilla Castillo sharing the title role, with acclaimed soprano Gillian Zammit as Amahl’s mother. The opera also stars Tama Matheson, Thomas Birch, Albert Buttigieg, and Joseph Lia. It is directed by Tama Matheson and conducted by Michael Summers.
Amahl and the Night Visitors was originally commissioned by American TV network NBC for a live broadcast to celebrate Christmas at the end of 1951. Menotti was inspired to create Amahl and the Night Visitors after seeing Hieronymus Bosch’s famous painting The Adoration of the Kings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. ‘Suddenly I heard again… the weird song of the Three Kings,’ he later recalled. The score was eventually finished just days before the live broadcast took place, on Christmas Eve 1951, with Menotti’s partner, the composer Samuel Barber, helping to complete the orchestration.
“This deceptively simple opera is all about a Christmas miracle wherein the birth of the Christ Child is implied and the miracle takes place during the voyage of the Three Kings to Bethlehem,” explains Kenneth Zammit Tabona, Teatru Manoel’s Artistic Director. “They are forced to take shelter in the very humble home of a widow and her crippled son Amahl and this is how the miracle happens in music…It never fails to bring tears to my eyes,”
Zammit Tabona has had the dream of presenting this beautiful work of art at the theatre for many years, and has finally managed to with the help of the well-established ŻiguŻajg festival. Fresh from attending the annual Opera Europa conference in Paris, Zammit Tabona reiterates that the emphasis was placed on the nurturing of young audiences and what better way is there to do this than to present young and young at heart audiences with accessible operas like this?
“My aim is to beat Germany where statistics show that 8% of the population attend opera,’ he adds. “That’s a larger percentage than those who attend football!”
Amahl and the Night Visitors will be performed at Teatru Manoel on Saturday 24th November at 6:30pm and Sunday 25th November at 11:30am. For further information and to book tickets visit www.ziguzajg.org. ŻiguŻajg is produced by Fondazzjoni Kreattività and will run from the 16 to 25 November 2018.
