节日季节

Festival Time!

当作曲家吉安·卡洛·梅诺蒂（Gian Carlo Menotti）在世时，绝对没有如此的凝聚力。没有人比得上他，把歌剧这门艺术带到大众中——他的作品常在百老汇上演，他也是首位专为电台和电视台创作歌剧的作曲家——乐评界给予他的是批评多于赞赏。他们的批评有时候尖酸刻薄，用的词语还包括“煽情”和“没有冒险精神”。

During his lifetime, the composer Gian Carlo Menotti was hardly what you＇d call a great uniter. Although no one did better in bringing opera to the masses -- his shows regularly appeared on Broadway, and he was the first composer to write operas especially for radio and television -- he was rarely a hit with critics, who often called his music ＂maudlin＂ and ＂unadventurous.＂ Countless Americans can claim his works as their introduction to opera -- including myself, having seen a production of Amelia Goes to the Ball at Manhattan School of Music when I was still in high school -- but other composers had been known to remove their pieces from concert programs rather than have their music played next to his.