Gian Carlo Menotti View Sheet Music for this Artist
Life and career
Born in Cadegliano-Viconago, Italy, Lake Maggiore and the Swiss border, Menotti was the sixth child of Alfonso and Ines Menotti. Menotti began writing songs when he was seven years old, and at eleven wrote both the libretto and music for his first opera, The Death of Pierrot. He began his formal musical training at Milan's Verdi Conservatory in 1923.
After the death of his father, Menotti and his mother emigrated to the United States, and he enrolled at Philadelphia's Curtis Institute of Music where he studied composition under Rosario Scalero. Fellow students at Curtis included Leonard Bernstein and Samuel Barber. The latter became Menotti's partner in life and in work, with Menotti crafting the libretto for Barber's most famous opera, Vanessa, which premiered in 1958, at the Metropolitan Opera. As a student, Menotti spent much of his time with the Samuel Barber family in West Chester, Pennsylvania. After graduation, the two men bought a house together in Mount Kisco, New York which they shared for over forty years. It was at Curtis that Menotti wrote his first mature opera, Amelia al Ballo (Amelia Goes to the Ball), to his own Italian text. The Island God (which he suppressed, though its libretto was printed by the Metropolitan Opera and can be found in many libraries) and The Last Savage were the only other operas he wrote in Italian, the rest being in English. Like Wagner, he wrote the libretti of all his operas. His most successful works were composed in the 1940s and 1950s. Menotti also taught at the Curtis Institute of Music.
In 1958, he founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy; he founded its companion festival in Charleston, South Carolina in 1977. For three weeks each summer, Spoleto is visited by nearly a half-million people. These festivals were intended to bring opera to a popular audience and helped launch the careers of such artists as singer Shirley Verrett and choreographers Paul Taylor and Twyla Tharp. He left Spoleto USA in 1993 to take the helm of the Rome Opera.
Gian Carlo Menotti Sheet Music
Click on a song to see the sheet music arrangements
| Song Title |
Arrangements |
| Afraid, Am I Afraid? (Baba's Aria) |
1 |
| Ah, Do Not Laugh |
1 |
| Ah, Michele, Don't You Know |
1 |
| Ah, Poor Michele |
1 |
| All That Gold! |
1 |
| Be Good To Her |
1 |
| Hello! Oh, Margaret, It's You |
1 |
| I Know That You All Hate Me |
1 |
| Look At All Those Things |
1 |
| Lullaby |
1 |
| Monica's Waltz |
1 |
| My Sleeping Beauty |
1 |
| Oh, Sweet Jesus |
1 |
| Oh, Thoses Faces! |
1 |
| Oh, Woman, You May Keep The Gold |
1 |
| Oh, Yes, I Love Her |
1 |
| Out Of My Dreams |
1 |
| Shall We Ever See The End Of All This! |
1 |
| The Black Swan |
1 |
| The Bride's Song |
1 |
| The Empty-handed Traveler |
1 |
| The Foreign Woman's Aria |
1 |
| The Police Agent's Aria |
1 |
| This Is My Box |
1 |
| To This We've Come |
1 |
