FULL LABYRINTH (Menotti) Cambridge MA 2024 Cambridge Chamber Ensemble
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Labyrinth
- Composer: Menotti Gian Carlo
- Libretto: Gian Carlo Menotti Libretto Text, Libretto Index
- Venue & Opera Company: Multicultural Arts Center, Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge Chamber Ensemble
- Recorded: November 2024
- Type: Staged Opera Live
- Singers: Junhan Choi, Emma Robertson, Patrick Bessenbacher, Fred VanNess Jr., AddieRose Brown, Courtney Elvira, Andrew Boisvert, Jacob O’Shea
- Conductor: Stephanie Beatrice
- Orchestra:
- Stage Director: Michael Meraw
- Costume Designer: Brittanie Gigler
- Lighting Designer: RJ LaMura
Information about the Recording
- Published by: The Cambridge Chamber Ensemble
- Date Published: 2025
- Format: Streaming
- Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Labyrinth is an opera in one act by composer Gian Carlo Menotti. The work was commissioned for television by the NBC Opera Theatre and uses an English language libretto by the composer. Unlike Menotti’s previous television operas, such as Amahl and the Night Visitors, this opera was written with no intention of being moved to live stage performance later. Menotti intended for this work to utilize the special effects unique to television which could not be recreated in live theatre. As a result, NBC’s television production of the opera was the only performance the work had received until Ventura College mounted a production in June of 2020, directed by Brent Wilson. After its March 3, 1963 broadcast the opera was mainly criticized by the press for its trite use of allegory and music which rejected the avant-garde in favour of romanticism.
In Labyrinth, which Menotti describes as a “riddle,” a young Groom and his Bride on their honeymoon find themselves in a mysterious ancient hotel, long past its former glory. Hotel guests, some quite dotty, keep popping up, giving increasingly strange advice and bad directions as the couple turn down one hallway after another in an ever more frantic search for their room key. Frantically they sing, “Bell boy, bell boy, wait for me, wait for me…can you find it, can you find the key that unlocks the door …” and then sadly, the bride laments, “I shall never see my home again.” If you stay to the end of the 50-minute show, you’ll see the solution to the riddle.