Word: work
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Dates: during 1960-1960
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...concluding minutes of the work, the distant heavenly host (on tape) ethereally sang what seemed to be an authentic, slightly dissonant Latin cantus, but was in fact one of Orff's own haunting evocations of the medieval spirit. Then a procession of children filed across the starlit snowscape and knelt in adoration, while the witches took a disheartened curtain call and skulked off as the head hag consoled: "Humans, if they are put up to it right, will crucify anybody...
...removing the Christmas legend from the tradition of sweetness and light, Orff had given all the good lines to the forces of darkness. When the witches were offstage, the hour-long pageant was static, lacked the exciting, full-blooded drama found in most of his work, including his Easter play, Comoedia de Christi Resurrectione. But the musical backgrounds were compelling, and the enthusiastic première audience demanded 15 curtain calls...
...critic called the pageant the paltry sum of "lemur-like witches from a melo drama, fur-clad shepherds from an amateur little theater, and small children from a club Christmas pageant." But other German critics found Orff's work magical, "full of simple poetry and totally pious...
...Amahl and the Night Visitors had its premiere on NBC television, has been a seasonal fixture ever since. Last week another Christmas opera, Golden Child, was displayed on NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame. Composed by Philip Bezanson with a libretto by Paul Engle, the new work sounded a lot like Menotti gone western-and gone weak. The music kept attempting to soar melodically, but kept being dashed to the ground again by its own heaviness. Still, the score had its stirring, lyrical moments, and Golden Child deserved credit at least for trying to be a serious addition...
...California, 1849, the work opens rousingly with a brawling square dance of drunken, gold-greedy prospectors at Sutter's Fort. They ignore Captain Sutter (Jerome Hines), whose heart represents the purest nugget in the West, when he reminds them that it is Christmas Eve, wishes that "gold had never shown its yellow, sneaking face." Meanwhile, out on a snowy, nearby mountain slope, a courageous couple and their daughter (Judy Sanford) are near death from cold and starvation after a long trek west in search of a new life. But miraculously they stumble onto Sutter's Fort, where...