“Amahl and the Night Visitors”

Posted by Gail M. Burns - December 1998

In what is becoming a holiday tradition, local artists have once again staged
“Amahl and the Night Visitors” in Venable Hall on the MCLA campus as part of
the Smith House Concert series. It is a shame that the seats were so very
bare on opening night last night, because this is a real gift from the college
to the community, and one which deserves more support than it appears to be
receiving.

Amahl and the Night Visitors is a rarity among operas. It was written in the
20th century (1951), in English, for television, and it runs only an hour.
The author, Gian Carlo Menotti, says that he wrote it for children in an
effort to recapture his own childhood in Italy. It was not Santa Clasu that
brought the Christmas gifts in Menotti’s village, but the three kings. And it
was on this memory that he based this charming tale of a poor, crippled
shepherd boy and his widowed mother visited one night by those three monarchs
of legend as they follow the Christmas star.

It is unfortunate that nine-year-old Kyle Barry of Pittsfield, who plays Amahl
in the MCLA production, is not at all up to the vocal demands of the role. I
sat in the second row and had trouble hearing him. This drawback makes the
early minutes of the show less entertaining than they could be, but what Barry
lacks in volume he makes up for in energy and presence. He is a talented
young man.

He is ably supported throughout the show by the marvelous Ariel Halverson as
his mother. Halverson, a professional singer who also bears the title of
cantor in one of her other lives, is deeply moving as Amahl’s poor widowed
mother. She brought me to tears in the second act when she struggles with her
desire to steal some of the kings’ gold to help her crippled son.

The entire show comes to life when the three kings enter. Keith Kibler as
Melchoir, Richard Miller as Kaspar, and Duane Lee as Balthazar look and sound
regal indeed, and bring great energy to their individual characters. They are
the kings of a childs imagination, and the scene in which Amahl asks them no
end of silly questions is delightful.

Ryan Barry rounds out the cast as the kings’ page. Like his younger brother,
he has good stage presence and energy. Director and producer Alice Jenkins
obviously had great rapport with her cast to get them to deliver such
uniformly charming performances.

The costumes by Jenkins and Robert Boland are perfect – ragged but serviceable
for Amahl, his mother, and their shepherd neighbors, and sumptuously royal for
the kings and their page. It is a great pity that choreographer Susan Hakes
was allowed to costume her six dancers herself. Their costumes clash and have
none of the style that Jenkins and Boland have worked hard to create. I found
the dance equally jarring. While Hakes has trained her dancers well, her own
choreography seems disconnected from both the plot and Menotti’s music.

No one is given direct credit for the small and professional looking set,
although I strongly suspect it is the work of Andrew Hoar, the scenic artist
behind most MCLA productions, who is billed as both stage manager and
technical director.

I took my notoriously wiggly ten year old son with me to see Amahl and he was
a charmed as I was with the production. At just an hour, it is an ideal
introduction to opera for young children, all of whom can relate to Amahl’s
antics and his relationshipship with his mother. This is a timeless and
delightful holiday treat for all ages.

“Amahl and the Night Visitors” runs tonight at 8 PM and tomorrow at 2 and 8 PM
in the Venable Theatre on the MCLA campus in North Adams. Tickets, at $5 for
adults, $4 for seniors and students, or $3 for groups of 10 or more, may be
purchased at the Pittsfield Community Music School, 30 Wendell Avenue or the
McClellands Hallmark Stores on Main Street in North Adams and Spring Street in
Williamstown. For more information, call (413) 662-5201.

copyright Gail M. Burns, 1998

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