Menotti's enduring Christmas gift

By:

LeRoy Goldman

Columnist

Hendersonville Times

BlueRidgeNow.com

December 18, 2016

Christmas is about presents, right? It’s certainly not about Christ or Christianity. There’s ample proof of that. We don’t count down the days till Christ’s birthday. We count down the SHOPPING days till Christmas.

It all begins with Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, which used to be called the Macy’s Christmas Parade. And regardless of what it’s called, we know Macy’s is in the business of selling stuff, not Christ. Heck, too many Americans now acquiesce to the notion that saying the words “Merry Christmas” is a form of religious intolerance. Political correctness demands we say, “Happy holidays.” How about we just say, “Happy stuff”?

Moreover, the selling frenzy has been taken to new heights. We’ve got Black Friday (which now begins on Thanksgiving), Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. And when we finally get to Dec. 25, the conversation is all about what we got, not what we gave.

So, since Christmas is all about presents, I want to tell you about my greatest Christmas present ever. I hope it may cause you to think, or rethink, what your very best Christmas present has been, or could be.

Come back with me now to Christmas Eve 1951. I was 13, and earlier that year we got our first TV. It was a black and white RCA with a 12½-inch screen. It was housed in a large wooden cabinet in order to accommodate its massive picture tube and its numerous and relatively short-lived vacuum tubes. For our family and millions of other families, it opened a wholly new and exciting world.

And on Christmas Eve that year, that TV brought into our living room the debut of what was to become television at its very best, the “Hallmark Hall of Fame” program. That Christmas Eve, it presented Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera for children of all ages, “Amahl and the Night Visitors.” It was broadcast live.

Don’t let the word “opera” turn you off. Back then, I couldn’t sing, read music or play an instrument, and that has never changed. None of those limitations was consequential that Christmas Eve as my family and I tuned in to NBC and went to the opera.

Menotti had been commissioned by NBC to write the first opera for television. While he intended to write an opera for children, he faced an oncoming Christmas deadline without any clear idea of what to write. But then, as Menotti visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York in November, he came upon “The Adoration of the Kings” by Hieronymus Bosch. It reminded him of his childhood in Italy and how children there believed their Christmas gifts were brought not by Santa Claus but by the Three Kings. Bosch’s portrait of the Magi gave Menotti just the inspiration he needed.

After the dress rehearsal just days before Christmas Eve, Arturo Toscanini, director of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, told Menotti, “This is the best you’ve ever done.”

Amahl, a disabled boy, and his mother live in grinding poverty near Bethlehem. They are Arabs. Amahl has an outsized imagination, and his mother does not believe him when he tells her of a gigantic star over their roof. She also does not believe him when he tells her that three kings are at the door and wish to rest for the night.

But the star is there, and so are the kings. They come from the east, and they follow a star. One is a Persian, another an Indian, and the third a Babylonian. Like Amahl and his mother, they are not Jews. They are on their way to offer gifts to an infant they believe to be the newborn King of the Jews.

Amahl and his mother also want to offer gifts to the child, but they have nothing — until Amahl offers to give his crutch to the kings to take to Jesus. When he makes the offer, his leg is miraculously healed, and he then leaves with the Magi as they complete their journey.

My takeaway from that splendid program was the miracle that healed Amahl. It took me another 38 years to realize that I had missed Menotti’s real meaning of Amahl.

Since 1951, “Amahl and the Night Visitors” has been performed on every continent and seen by more people than any other opera in history. Just before Christmas in 1989, it played at the Eisenhower Theater in the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. My wife and I went. I wanted to see it again, and she had never seen it. The staging was remarkable with falling snow and real goats.

It was there that I first understood that opera’s real meaning. It all had to do with the juxtaposition of the three kings’ gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh with Amahl’s gift of his crutch. The Magi had immense power and wealth. Their gifts came easy. But Amahl’s crutch was not only the only thing he had, it was the one thing that gave him the ability to walk. He had no reason to believe that offering his crutch to the Christ child would lead to his miraculous healing.

And that is the magic in Menotti’s “Amahl.” It’s an enduring Christmas present for each of us, if we open our minds and our hearts.

LeRoy Goldman is a Flat Rock resident. Reach him at:

EmailMe