Amelia Goes to the Ball

Amelia Goes to the Ball
(Italian: Amelia al ballo) is an
opera buffa in one act
composed by Gian Carlo Menotti.
Menotti also wrote the original
Italian libretto. Composed when
he was twenty-three, it was
Menotti's first mature opera and
his first critical success. The
opera was first performed in
Philadelphia on 1 April 1937 and
recounts a series of farcical
events as a young Italian
socialite overcomes various
obstacles to her attendance at
the first ball of the social season.
Contents [hide]
1 Performance history
2 Roles
3 Synopsis
4 Score
5 Recordings
6 References
7 External links
Performance history
The opera's world premiere,
produced by the Curtis Institute
of Music, took place on 1 April
1937 at the Philadelphia
Academy of Music in a
production directed by Austrian
composer, librettist, and stage
director Ernst Lert and using set
and costume designs by Tony
Award winning designer Donald
Oenslager. The opera was
presented in a double bill with
the US premiere of Darius
Milhaud's Le pauvre matelot. The
premiere used an English
translation of the libretto by
George Mead with the score
revised somewhat by Menotti to
fit the English text.[1] Both
operas were conducted by Fritz
Reiner with Sylvan Levin serving
as chorus master and a young
Boris Goldovsky working as
Assistant Conductor. The
Milhaud/Menotti double bill
played later that month in
Baltimore at the city's Lyric
Theatre and at the New
Amsterdam Theatre in New York
City, with Florence Kirk taking
over the title role at the latter
theatre. On 2 May 1937,
excerpts from the opera
performed by the original cast
with Levin conducting were
broadcast by CBS radio as part
of National Music Week in the
United States.
Amelia Goes to the Ball had its
Metropolitan Opera premiere on
3 March 1938 with Muriel
Dickson as Amelia, John
Brownlee as her husband, and
Mario Chamlee as her lover. The
opera received a total of seven
performances at the Met that
season, four times in a double
bill with Strauss' Elektra
(including the opening night),
twice paired with Strauss'
Salome, and once with Rimsky-
Korsakov's Le coq d'or.[2]
The first Italian performance,
using the original libretto and
title, Amelia al ballo, took place
on 4 April 1938 in the opera
theatre of the Sanremo
Municipal Casino. Amelia's
success at the Met and
elsewhere led to a commission
from NBC for an opera
specifically composed for radio,
Menotti's 1939 The Old Maid and
the Thief.[3] During the 1950s,
the opera had a surge in
popularity in Italy, with the
work being mounted for the
first time at the Teatro
Comunale di Bologna (7
December 1951), the Teatro
Regio in Parma (18 January
1952), La Scala (24 March 1954),
the Teatro Regio in Turin (8 May
1954), and the Teatro dell'Opera
di Roma (29 December 1956)
among others. The Belgium
premiere of the work was given
at La Monnaie on 11 March 1955
and the French premiere was
given at the opera house in Metz
on 9 December 1967.[4]
Amelia had several revivals in
1987 (on the occasion of
Menotti's 75th birthday)
including a performance in the
original Italian at the Juilliard
School Opera Center, directed by
the composer himself,[5] It is
still periodically performed, with
productions in the 2008/2009
seasons in Vichy, Buenos Aires,
and São Paulo, as well as a 2010
double bill with Menotti's The
Telephone in Tours, using the
2006 co-production by Opéra de
Lausanne and the Opéra
Comique.[6]
Roles
Role Voice
type
Premiere Cast,
1 April 1937
[7]
(Conductor:
Fritz Reiner)
Amelia soprano Margaret Daum
Amelia's
husband baritone Conrad Mayo
Amelia's
lover tenor William Martin
Amelia's
friend contralto Edwina Eustis
The Chief
of Police bass Leonard Treash
The cook mezzo-
soprano Wilburta Horn
The maid mezzo-
soprano Charlotte
Daniels
Chorus of nosy neighbours,
passersby, police and ambulance
men
Synopsis
Setting: an elegant apartment in
Milan
Amelia, a wealthy young
socialite, is in her boudoir
getting ready for the first ball
of the season. However, her
husband has discovered that
she has a lover and refuses to
accompany Amelia unless she
reveals his name. When she
reveals that her lover is their
upstairs neighbour, a general
melee breaks out between the
jealous husband and her pesty
lover, with Amelia eventually
breaking a vase over her
husband's head. When the police
arrive, she tells them that a
burglar had entered the
apartment and attacked her
husband with the vase. Her
husband is taken to hospital, her
lover is arrested as the burglar,
and Amelia leaves for the ball on
the arm of the Chief of Police
who has come to investigate.
Score
The full version of the score is
orchestrated for 3 flutes, 2
oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2
horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones,
tuba, percussion, celeste,
xylophone, harp and strings.[8]
The score was described by the
Time Magazine, critic who
attended the world premiere as
"full of glowing, facetious music
admirably suited to the
story",[9] and by the New York
World-Telegram as "delightful",
"vivacious" and "tuneful" in a
review of its first performance
at the Met.[10] However,
following a performance of
Amelia Goes to the Ball in
Birmingham (England) in 1989,
Jan Smaczny writing for Opera
described it as a "breath-
takingly banal" combination of
"blunt pastiche" and "overripe
verismo lyricism".[11]
Recordings
The 1954 La Scala production of
Amelia al ballo conducted by
Nino Sanzogno with Margherita
Carosio as Amelia, Giacinto
Prandelli as her lover, and
Rolando Panerai as her husband,
has been re-released on CD by
Testament Records (1999),
Urania Records (2007) and
Naxos Historical (coupled with a
1950 recording of The Consul) in
2010. Excerpts from the opera
also appear on several CDs, most
notably, Amelia's aria "While I
waste these precious hours" on
Leontyne Price – The Prima
Donna Collection (RCA Victor
Gold Seal, 1992/95) and the
husband's recitative and aria
"Non si va!...Amelia cara" on
Prima Voce: Rolando Panerai
(Nimbus Records, 2008).
Pic from wikipedia.org