Music review: ‘Amahl and the Night Visitors’

Project unites local talent, shares a composer’s most lasting work

• By Peter Jacobi H-T Reviewer | pjacobi@heraldt.com

Once in a while, a cultural event generates significance that goes beyond performance.

Two years ago, Jewish Theater of Bloomington produced the children’s opera “Brundibar,” written by the Czech composer Hans Kraza for performance in the concentration camp Terezin or Theresienstadt, a place from which most of the prisoners were eventually transported to the death camp at nearby Auschwitz. The local production brought together members of the Jewish Theater, children from the city’s schools and other interested parties in the community.

The project, a moving effort, not only united varying artistic elements in the area but taught both participants and audiences about a historic happening of beauty-amidst-horror that should not be forgotten, one told and sung through a story about the innocence of children vanquishing evil.

In a very different way and with a very different musical work, local musicians on Sunday afternoon and evening at the Ivy Tech John Waldron Arts Center twice presented Gian Carlo Menotti’s sweet opera for children, “Amahl and the Night Visitors.”

This production not only allowed local audiences to see the composer’s most lasting and endearing work but to experience the results of a collaboration that engaged four community arts institutions: the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra (BSO), Reimagining Opera for Kids (ROK), the chorus Voces Novae and the Windfall Dancers, along with an Indiana University-trained theater alum to direct, and a cast of singers of town and gown ties to portray the characters.

This “Amahl” began in the mind of Alejandro Gomez Guillen, the Bloomington Symphony’s artistic director and conductor. Gomez Guillen has talents as singer, too, and as a child, he had learned the part of Amahl, hoping to sing the star role in Colombia’s premiere of the opera. Lack of money killed off that production; it did not diminish Gomez Guillen love for the opera.

The thought came to him some months ago to present “Amahl” in the very town that gave the opera its first staged production early in 1952, two months after the opera’s world premiere on television as a commissioned piece on Christmas 1951 by NBC. He conferred with ROK’s director Kimberly Caballo, Voces Novae director Susan Swaney, and Windfall Dancers’ Kay Olges and Chelsea Sherman. All were enthusiastic. And an idea began to become reality.

The results, viewable and hearable on Sunday, were auspicious, not always totally professional, for the participating groups are community ensembles of mostly devoted amateurs, but auspicious for honesty and energy and charm, all needed qualities demanded by Menotti’s three-quarters-of-an-hour delight.

Director Meagan Deiter, an MFA-in-theater alum from IU, used the Waldron’s main stage, left unburdened by a minimum of scenery, wisely and widely. Members of the BSO sat close to a side wall, working away under their maestro Gomez Guillen. Other participants came and went as needed. Attempted and achieved was a mood of sincerity and warmth and belief, without which the opera does not work.

The BSO played very well. The singers in Voces Novae sang very well. The Windfall Dancers moved very well. Not an ounce of energy did anyone leave behind, or so it certainly seemed.

Without the right cast, all the rest would be to no avail. Fortunately, that was not the case. Let’s begin with the adults. As Amahl’s poverty-burdened mother, soprano Amanda Russo Stante poured forth rich sounds from start to finish, releasing the woman’s love of child and bitterness about life in ancient Israel through depths and heights of emotion.

The Visitors, the Three Kings, stopping by on their way to present the Child Jesus with gifts, were superbly cast: tenor Carmund White as the hard-of-hearing and amusing King Kaspar, bass-baritone Marcus Simmons as the commanding King Balthasar, and bass Jeremiah Sanders as the jovial King Melchior. The kings’ page was impressively, by Menotti’s design almost silently, portrayed by 12-year-old seventh grader Callum Parnell Miles.

That brings us to the title character, dear Amahl, a lame child dependent on his crutch, which he selflessly gives to the visitors for Jesus, only to be immediately healed. Menotti called for a boy soprano to sing the role, not an adult soprano. Sunday’s production stopped in between, assigning the role to 8-year-old Madeline Elle Norman, a member of the IU Children’s Choir and a touching-to-watch stage presence as a child motivated by absolute innocence and young desires. Madeline gave the role a distinct personality. Her pleasing little voice hit all the right notes and meanings. One wonders, however, whether its fragility might have been assisted by use of a sensitive, carefully employed microphone to help lift it through the theater. Importantly, Madeline gave the portrayal her considerable all.

This community effort is one to be remembered. All participants deserve praise for the doing of it, from the on-stage Amahl, his mother and the visitors, to the supporting musicians, and to those backstage who brought a splendid idea to fruition.

(Here’s a preview Peter posted on the day of the show as well)

One-act opera highlights talents of four local institutions

By Peter Jacobi H-T columnist Dec 9, 2018

There’s history and there’s currency in the ties that bind Bloomington and Giancarlo Menotti’s opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors.”

History: This beloved one-act opera marking the Christmas season had its stage premiere here in a production by the Indiana University Jacobs School Opera Theater in February 1952, just two months after the work’s world premiere, on NBC Television, December 24, 1951.

Currency: “Amahl” gets two performances today, at 5:30 and 7:30 p.m., in the John Waldron Arts Center, featuring a production that importantly and adventurously combines the efforts of four local arts institutions — the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra (BSO), the chorus Voces Novae, Reimagining Opera for Kids (ROK) and Windfall Dancers.

There have been other local connections with Menotti’s heartwarming piece, such as the presence of two Jacobs School faculty members in national productions: bass-baritone David Aiken portrayed one of the Night Visitors, the forgiving King Melchior, in the original television presentation and on numerous occasions throughout his later performing years. Basso Giorgio Tozzi can be seen in the same role on videos created in the 1970s.

As for today’s production, the idea originated with the Bloomington Symphony’s conductor and artistic director Alejandro Gomez Guillen last December while “feeling a bit of holiday nostalgia.” He, as an 11-year-old boy singer, had learned the title role back in Columbia seeking to play Amahl in the national premiere of the opera. An opportunity sought became an opportunity denied when funding for the premiere fell through and the event failed to happen. “I have loved the piece ever since,” he says, “have had the opportunity to conduct it a couple of times before, and have had it in the back of my mind as something we could do in Bloomington.

“I wrote Kim (Carballo, founder of Reimagining Opera for Kids) about the possibility of bringing the opera here in collaboration with other arts organizations. In less than 30 minutes,” Gomez Guillen recalls, “I received an enthusiastic YES from Kim. We had collaborated before and by then called her a friend.”

For vocal opportunities here, Gomez Guillen joined Sue Swaney’s Voces Novae, “filling a great void and putting me into an ensemble where I’ve met some great people. It made perfect sense to ask Voces Novae to be part of the collaboration. I had also been aware of Windfall Dancers whose Kay Olges was always a friendly face and supportive of the orchestra’s activities.”

Meetings began in March. A stage director, former M.F.A. in Acting from IU Meaghan Dieter, now professor of musical theater and opera at the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, was brought in. “And now, here we are,” says Maestro Gomez Guillen, “four organizations whose missions align closely. Through this collaboration, we have done something that we could not have pulled off separately. How lucky we are in Bloomington.”

Chelsea Sherman, director of Windfall’s teen company, Windfall Juniors, says arts outreach is a key element in the life of that ensemble. “It is always a pleasure to collaborate with local organizations that seek to do the same and for our younger dancers to work with the senior company peer-to-peer.

ROK’s Kim Carballlo expresses gratitude for support from the Bloomington Arts Commission, 50+ Men Who Care, “and the generosity of the performers to make free admission possible, allowing everyone in the community, regardless of ability to pay, to experience the magic of this tale brought to life.”

And there lies a wrinkle. Financial support made free tickets possible for a holiday musical favorite, a family draw: a lovely musical setting for a story about a lame boy and his poor mother; about the Three Kings coming by and being invited to stay; about a desperate theft of gold, its failure and forgiveness; about a boy’s healing and decision to accompany the visitors to the baby Jesus. There are just two performances of the opera in the Waldron Auditorium.

That means only 300 or so free tickets have been distributable for available seats. All have been snatched, I’m told. But, you never know whether there’ll be returns or no-shows. Try for admission, if you’re so inclined. Perhaps, you’ll be lucky. It would be unfortunate to leave any seat empty.

Giancarlo Menotti told about how his most successful opera came to be. He faced fulfillment of a commission for NBC Opera Theater to provide a suitable holiday work. He claims to have had not a single idea for a subject until walking one November afternoon through the galleries of New York’s Metropolitan Museum. “I chanced,” he said, “to stop in front of ‘Adoration of the Kings’ by Hieronymus Bosch, and as I was looking at it, suddenly I heard again, coming from the distant blue hills, the weird song of the Three Kings. I then realized they had come back to me and had brought me a gift,” the missing idea for an opera due in a matter of weeks.

As a child in Italy, Giancarlo and his brother had no Santa Claus. “I suppose,” he explained, “Santa Claus is much too busy with American children to be able to handle Italian children as well. Our gifts were brought to us by the Three Kings, instead.

“Actually,” he continued, “I never met the Three Kings. It didn’t matter how hard my little brother and I tried to keep awake at night to catch a glimpse of the royal visitors, we would always fall asleep just before they arrived. But I do remember hearing them. I remember the weird cadence of their song in the dark distance. I remember the brittle sound of the camels’ hooves crushing the frozen snow. And I remember the mysterious tinkling of their silver bridles.

To these Three Kings I mainly owe the happy Christmas seasons of my childhood, and I should have remained very grateful to them. Instead, I came to America and soon forgot all about them, for here at Christmas time, one sees so many Santa Clauses scattered all over town.”

How fortunate for the composer’s November 1951 walk in Manhattan and a stop at the Met and the presence of that Bosch painting and, consequently, the memories refreshed. A gift of music about a poor little boy’s gift of a crutch came to be. That has become a constantly bestow-able gift for us everywhere, later today right here in Bloomington.