"Amahl" makes all the right moves

Gian Carlo Menotti's "Amahl and the Night Visitors," running through Dec. 23 at Theatrical Outfit's Balzer Theater at Herren's, is charming, humorous, excessively sentimental -- and a thoroughly enjoyable 45 minutes of American opera for the Christmas season.

For many years, Georgia State University has circulated a student production of "Amahl." In one form or another, it's been staged in churches and theaters across metro Atlanta. This year, GSU director of music W. Dwight Coleman, who is also the production's stage director, brought the opera to Theatrical Outfit as a joint venture. If it's a box office success, Coleman told me, they'll replace the portable set next year with a more deluxe production.

For opera fans, "Amahl" has a bittersweet history. A half-century ago, there was an expectation that Menotti's tuneful little melodramas -- he'd already scored hits with "The Medium" and "The Consul" -- would spark a popular uprising for vernacular opera. He would become "the American Puccini." NBC television commissioned from him an opera to broadcast live on Christmas Eve, 1951, and "Amahl" was rebroadcast annually for more than a decade. But the U.S. didn't need its own Puccini -- Puccini could hold that title himself, thank you -- and there were fresher, jazzier, more in-the-moment sounds coming from Broadway and Hollywood. (And it took John Adams' minimalist "Nixon in China," in 1987, to finally launch a boom in American-made operas.)

"Amahl" is the story of a disabled boy and his impoverished widow mother who host the Three Wise Men following the star to Bethlehem. Menotti, who wrote the music and the libretto, explores truths of human nature: that all mothers consider their child a messiah of sorts; that a crowd of shepherds (aka "the people") would gladly offer gifts to kings who have everything but not to a troubled family that has nothing; and that magic and miracles make for popular theater but pat endings.

The opera remains popular with student singers and amateur music-theater troupes, for the singing lines are graceful on the voice. This production offers past and present GSU students in all the roles, except the title character (a trio of boys who alternate performances). The night I attended it was Ruben Roy, a member of the Georgia Boy Choir, who delivered a pure treble voice, poised demeanor and slightly hammy charisma. He was a great Amahl.

As his mother, Jenny Kim had some radiant moments, although her youthful voice is still a little grey in color.

Coleman's direction was wonderfully clear and efficient. He made the Magi comically absurd characters. Stephen McCool's King Melchoir dresses like Boris Godounov (a Russian czar) and sings with muddy diction, which reduces his ability to communicate with the audience. Brendan Callahan's King Kaspar has a powerful, attractive tenor voice that hasn't yet been brought under control. Gerald Yarbray is the "black" King Balthazar with a booming basso voice.

Daniel E. Solberg accompanies the singers on an electronic keyboard set to "orchestra" and, a pity, his reworking comes off as cloying and Saccharine -- rather than as a more austere counterbalance to all the sweetness on stage. If there's no budget for a small chamber orchestra, I'd have preferred the standard piano reduction, which highlights Menotti's structure and gives the opera its spine.

Still, Coleman's "Amahl" makes all the right moves and makes an endearing introduction to opera as an art form.

Pierre Ruhe blogs about classical music at www.ArtsCriticATL.com

OPERA REVIEW

"Amahl and the Night Vistors." Running various times through Dec. 23.