‘Amahl and the Night Visitors:’ An Opera About a Shepherd, Three Kings, and the Spirit of Christmas

Commentary
From October through December, department stores, television, merchandise, and popular tunes remind us that “it’s the most wonderful time of the year!” Disagreeing with the jollity is a sure-fire way to declare yourself a modern-day Scrooge, but the secular commercialism can become cloying to those who are sensitive to Christmas’s Christian significance. Even families who understand the holiday’s religious meaning may find that many of the traditional customs trade the birth of Jesus for tinsel and holly.
A popular Yuletide tradition for many people is seeing a Christmas-themed production. Every ballet company in the world, from the humblest local school to the biggest professional troupe, performs some version of “The Nutcracker.” Theatrical groups perform different adaptations of Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol.” While these are both time-honored, beloved holiday tales, you may yearn for a Christmas show which includes shepherds and the Star of Bethlehem instead of Christmas goose and sugarplums. The solution is an opera, “Amahl and the Night Visitors” by Gian-Carlo Menotti….