Menotti's Hour

Gian Carlo Menotti owes a large part of his fame to television and the fact that Amahl has replaced Tiny Tim as America's favorite Christmas cripple. Though Menotti's Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951), like Maria Golovin (1958), was written primarily for television, the composer carefully followed all the conventions of stage presentation, and both works have been sung in theaters. But Menotti has finally gone all the way. His latest opera, Labyrinth, commissioned like the others by NBC and shown for the first time this week, would be impossible on the stage. It is an out-and-out TV show. Says Menotti: "I thought I might as well do something not tied to the stage. I fought it in one way, because I hate machines. But machines like me better than I like them, and I succumbed."

Menotti's surrender has been almost too complete. Labyrinth is full of video trickery: there is a gravity-free tea party aboard a rocket, which is halted by the untimely arrival of a meteor; there is an ancient railroad car used as a swimming pool, which, as its water gurgles down a drain to the accompaniment of some electronic movie music, becomes a high-and-dry day coach; and there is a dear old lady who puffs into a cloud of dust as the hero sits down on her.

Chess & Counterspies. Labyrinth takes place in a murky sort of mahogany Marienbad. Endless corridors and countless doors make the plight of a bridegroom who has lost his key and forgotten his room number on his wedding night seem hopeless indeed. As he and his bride flounder around with understandable impatience, a series of personages appear, each bearing--according to Menotti--a strong allegorical identity. An old man in a wheelchair, who represents The Past, lures the groom into a cobwebby conservatory filled with jungle plants to play a possibly symbolic game of chess. Another door leads him into a drab office where a horn-rimmed boss-lady screams into a jangle of telephones and thrusts envelopes to a flunky with: "Wrap it, lick it, and mail it!" She represents The Present, and is far too busy to help. An astronaut, who is The Future, offers a cup of tea but little sympathy: "Your key? But why look for key or door, with so many stars to explore?" A mute bellhop prances in and out of doors, leers at the bride, is finally stabbed by a voluptuous lady spy who sings: "He was a counterspy. He had to die!"

Coffins & Chases. At last, after losing his bride entirely in a series of aquatic misadventures, the bridegroom winds up wet and nearly naked at the desk of the hotel. The hotel manager, in sinister makeup, obviously represents Death. He has a key for the groom all right, the key he has been looking for all his life. The groom is told to lie down on a bench, and a coffin is built around him. When the manager and a lackey finish nailing it together, they carry it away, leaving the bridegroom lying dead on the bench, hands crossed on his chest. In one hand is the key.

Menotti has not had time within the framework of a television hour to develop either characters or unity of mood, has tailored his libretto to the limitations of the picture tube. But musically, the little opera is somewhat more successful. One aria, sung by Metropolitan Opera Soprano Judith Raskin, is lyrical and haunting; left alone in the corridor while her hus band, played by Baritone John Reardon, darts off on one of his searches, she sings I Shall Never, Never See My Home Again, the vocal highlight of the performance.

Menotti himself sums it up best: "In Labyrinth, I tried to see how unoperatic an opera could be. I defy all operatic traditions--for example, there's a hero who never sings an aria. In opera the score meditates upon the action--what moves you is the song of what is about to happen, or what happened. Here I have musical comment while things are still going on."

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