Amahl and the Night Visitors 

Amahl and the Night Visitors, the first opera composed for television, features both music and lyrics by the Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti.  The time is the first Christmas and the place is the road to Bethlehem, where Amahl, a very poor and disabled boy, lives with his mother in a small house. Mother and son seem to have lost their faith.  Guided by the amazingly bright star in the eastern sky, the three Magi are on their way to visit and present gifts to the Holy Child. While traversing “field and fountain, moor and mountain,” they stop to rest with Amahl and his mother.  When Amahl decides to give the gift of his crutch to the three Kings to take to the Holy Child, his leg is miraculously healed and the faith of mother and child is restored. The initial production of the opera was a live television broadcast on Christmas Eve in 1951, which one of the authors of this article viewed on a black-and-white 10” screen at home in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, in Lynchburg, Helen Pesci Wood, renowned soprano and ardent Menotti admirer, leapt at the chance to put on a production of this brand-new English-language opera. She would, of course, play the mother, and who better to take on the role of Amahl than her real-life son, Robin? Offering a “bribe” of $50, Helen managed to recruit the twelve-year-old, who was far more interested in sports than music, and they thus became the first mother-and-son team to star in the opera. 

Looking back on the months of enforced training and practice, Robin says “Mother was a slave driver,” but adds that he still gets quite sentimental when recalling the shared experience, which cemented a special bond between the two of them. Opening night was December 8, 1953, in Salisbury, NC, where one of the Three Kings was a professor of music at Catawba College. Overcome with stage fright, Robin told his mother, “I am not going out there,” to which she replied, “Oh yes you are!” And so out he went. Not only did he get the promised $50 (“I earned every penny!” he says), but a star-struck theater-goer even asked for his autograph. The production then continued for a week-long run at the Little Theater in Lynchburg, where the other author of this article was a very happy and impressed audience member.

Now, exactly 66 years later, please join us at the Historic Academy Theatre on Sunday, December 8, 2019, when Opera on the James and Liberty University School of Music will present two live performances of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” in glorious color.  Showtime’s are: 2:00pm & 4:30pm.

Article by: Bettye Chambers and Janice Puckett.