biography
| name: |
Menotti, Gian Carlo
|
pronunciation:
[menottee]
| sex:
| male
|
| lived:
| (1911– )
|
| biography:
| Composer, born in Cadegliano, Italy. He had written his first opera even before he went to the USA to study at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia (1927). Following his first success with the opera Amelia Goes to the Ball (1937), he became the most popular opera composer living in America. His other well-known operas (all with his own librettos), conservative and Italianate in style, include The Old Maid and the Thief (1939) and The Consul (1950), which won two Pulitzer Prizes. His opera Amahl and the Night Visitors premiered on television (1951) and was broadcast annually at Christmas for many years. Although not as well known as his operas, his other works include a madrigal ballet, The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore (1956) and a symphonic poem, Apocalypse (1951). In 1958 he founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy, and in 1977 it was expanded to a similar annual festival of art in Charleston, SC. |
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