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 The Theatreguide.London Review

In March 2020 the covid-19 epidemic forced the closure of all British theatres. Some companies adapted by putting archive recordings of past productions online, others by streaming new shows, and various online archives preserve still more vintage productions. Even as things return to normal we continue to review the experience of watching live theatre onscreen.

The Medium and The Telephone
Mission Opera 2021 and Arctic Philharmonic 2021   YouTube   February 2025

Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007) was an Italian-American composer and librettist best known for his English-language operas.

Although sometimes disdained by critics for being too 'old-fashioned' (i.e., melodic), his operas were immensely popular, among the most frequently produced and revived in the Twentieth Century, often in crossover settings.

The Medium and The Telephone first appeared on Broadway in 1948 rather than an opera house, and several, notably the Christmas opera Amahl And The Night Visitors, were commissioned and broadcast by commercial television networks.

Both of these short operas – The Medium runs about an hour and The Telephone about half that – are frequently done by music schools and smaller opera companies, and there are several recordings of each available on YouTube. After sampling them I chose one of each for review here.

In The Medium a fraudulent spiritualist is seen conning bereaved customers by faking contacts with their departed loved ones, only to have a brush with the real supernatural that drives her to panic and madness.

Like some of the others, this 2021 video from Los Angeles's Mission opera is performed to a one-piano transcription of Menotti's orchestral score, a forgivable financial decision that does deprive us of Menotti's rich orchestrations.

The two most beautiful melodies in the score – the 'Black Swan' lullaby with which the medium's daughter tries to calm her after her shock, and 'Monica's Waltz,' the same character's hope that all will be well – survive the orchestral absence, in part because we get to hear them at length.

Throughout his career it was one of Menotti's signature quirks that some of his best melodies were only a few bars long, leaving audiences hungry for more, and each of the mourners in the séance scene is given a lovely but all-too-short mini-aria of yearning.

On the other hand the climactic nightmare/mad scene is hurt when we only have the singer's erratic cries without the support and emotional context of the orchestra behind them.

Amelia Camacho as the daughter thus comes out best in this recording, with Janet Hopkins as the title character further handicapped by the combination of director Joshua R. Wentz's unwise advice to mug and stare wildly and television director's reliance on extreme close-ups that turns tragedy into grotesquery.

The Telephone is built on a joke with a touch of social satire to it. A man tries to propose to a woman, only to repeatedly be interrupted by phone calls that she finds more interesting. He finally gives up and leaves, only to call her from a pay phone and finally succeed in getting her attention.

Of the several versions on YouTube I chose the one from Norway's Arctic Philharmonic, even though its production wanders the farthest from Menotti's simple staging instructions.

Beautifully sung and acted by Mathilde Salmi Marjavera and Aleksander Nohrand, it has the major advantage of a small orchestra rather than a single piano, and director Jostein Kirkeby-Garstad's interpolations enhance the effect more than they interfere with it.

Menotti wrote a two-character piece, but Kirkeby-Garstad adds three silent figures, two mute actors suggesting the inner emotions of the singing characters – his earnestness and frustration and the hidden fear of what's to come that makes her escape into the trivial chatter of the calls – and a dancer (Maria Vulcan) embodying the slightly sinister allure of the telephone.

At worst, their onstage presence gives us more to look at, and they frequently enrich the emotional power of the moment.

The full orchestral score certainly shows off Menotti's ability to match drama to music. The accompaniment to a particularly trivial phone conversation mimics the rhythms of a chatterbox's chatter while implying the total absence of content to it, while the man's 'Again And Again' is a moving aria of despair.

(Incidentally, in both operas you will catch the occasional musical phrase that reminds you of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Much has been written about Lloyd Webber's musical similarities to Puccini, but I await a doctoral dissertation on his much more evident debt to Menotti.)

For those approaching Menotti for the first time, I recommend the thoroughly successful and accessible Amahl And The Night Visitors, but these two short works are excellent discoveries to move on to.

Gerald Berkowitz