The mother of Christmas operas must surely be Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors, originally produced for television in 1951. And, indeed, a Mother features very strongly in the work...and I don't mean the postpartum Virgin. Set against the riches carried by the Three Kings, who stop at their hut for a rest during their passage to Bethlehem, is the poverty of Amahl and his Mother. Her comments about the Kings' generosity toward the unseen Child are tremendously moving, as she observes the sorry state of her own son limping about right there in front of them: "No one will bring him incense or gold, though sick and hungry and cold." Interestingly, the only operatic number of my entire 2-article seasonal discussion to ever make it into pop holiday classics is Amahl's Shepherds' processional to this woman's home, a lilting ensemble punctuated by the Kings' somber "Thank you's" for the gifts these neighbors have brought to them. (Am I the only one who cares that these generous villagers haven't had the charity to make up a food basket for their starving hostess?) Driven by desperation, the Mother reaches for the gold when Kings doze off after the Shepherds have gone. Only when she is caught in the act by their Page does Melchior say she can keep her booty: "The Child we seek doesn't need our gold. On love alone He will build his kingdom." It is here that the unsettling mixed messages we have received about charity are redeemed: Amahl, presented at the opera's beginning as something of a brat, has been moved by the proceedings. Having nothing else to give, he offers his crutch to the Kings just in case Christ was born crippled too...and, by the grace of his gesture, his lameness is suddenly and completely cured. The opera ends with his joining the Kings on their journey so that he can personally meet the wondrous Child.
Simple as Amahl may appear, consider it in the context of its origins: When he received his commission to write an opera, Menotti racked his mind for a subject. Then inspiration came to him during a visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Bosch's "The Adoration of the Kings" brought back to him how, in his native Italy, instead of believing in Santa Claus, he and his brother routinely expected their Christmas presents to be brought by the Three Kings. And he recalled how he himself had been lame as a boy...the cure, unswervingly attributed to a special blessing he had received at the Sacre Monte. By setting his opera in a humble hut, he recreated the precepio, the Neapolitan-style nativity scene, that he associated with the Christmases of his youth.
