Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007)🇮🇹 was a composer, librettist, director, and playwright who began his career as a child prodigy multi-instrumentalist who spent his early teens studying at conservatories all across Italy and France. By the late 1920s he moved to the USA to study at The Curtis Institute where he would meet Samuel Barber thus beginning their more than 50yr creative and romantic partnership.
#SymSat #PrideMonth #GianCarloMenotti

“A Hand of Bridge, Op. 35” (https://youtu.be/GelwXT0qHLo?si=Occ38jRrZsUfOEAO) is a one act opera composed by Samuel Babrer with the Libretto written by Gian Carlo Menotti that debuted in 1959. Per the title, it’s centered around a the card game Bridge. The 4 players all air their existential anxieties and fantasies in their respective solo airettas. The original book for the opera features designs by Andy Warhol, a close friend of Barber and Menotti
#SymSat #PrideMonth #SamuelBarber #GianCarloMenotti #AndyWarhol

“Vanessa, Op. 32” (https://youtu.be/ykAqw1NY0UA?si=DBUUAayXcAvA325s) is another major collaboration between Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti. Tangentially inspired by Isak Dinesen's stories, in particular her “Seven Gothic Tales”. It’s essentially a gothic psychological thriller that tells the story of the delusions and illusions of obsessive love across the intersecting lives of 3 generations of women at the turn of the 20th century.
#SymSat #PrideMonth #SamuelBarber #GianCarloMenotti

Sorry about the video quality. The audio is pretty good despite that. This is from an 1979 episode of PBS’ “Great Performances” featuring a 1978 staging of “Vanessa” from The Spoleto Festival in North Carolina, which was co-founded in part by Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti as the American counterpart to the Festival dei Due Mondi in Italy that Menotti had founded a few years earlier. There is a part two available so if there’s no objections I can share that next week???
#SymSat

@analgesicsleep Fine with me. @otheorange_tag ? #symsat