No, I'd missed that, IGI, so thank you for the tip-off     Of course the AMAHL story is redolent of American schmaltz typical of his period, and it's far from the cutting edge of composition for its day...  but it deserves a footnote as the first opera written for TV, at least

Well, since we are talking Menottian Mothers,  and having given everyone else due pause to leap in if they wished,  I must lay my MEDIUM card and claim my points.  "Baba Flora" is another "appalling mother mezzo"... a charlatan, a cheat, a dypsomaniac and a fraud.   When I was doing the piece, I started researching a bit - there is very little in print on Menotti, he's never really been accepted as a serious composer by the establishment.  Two things stood out from his biography...  his mother had abandoned him as a youth, settling some money on him, enrolling him in a Music Academy, and then leaving for S America with her newly-found lover - he never heard from her again.  The story of Toby in THE MEDIUM - the little orphan who'd been abandoned in Budapest - must have had some subconscious origins here, and his "mute" status maybe deriving from an Italian boy who didn't speak a word of English in his new country?  This led on to the second idea...  what would Menotti have done to try to learn English?  Like Victor Borge, he'd have gone constantly to the cinema.  And what he'd have seen there was the zenith of film noir, movies like SORRY, WRONG NUMBER, and MILDRED PIERCE.  Mildred's notoriety arose from how a once-good woman had picked herself up and started a successful business, only to be led into a wave of viciousness and revenge that ends with a ruthless shooting...

"Come out! Come out!  If you are human, come out!  I'll shoot!  I'll shoot!"  (shoots five times, the body of Toby falls from behind the curtain).
[THE MEDIUM, final scene]


PS The link with film noir strengthens when we remember that Menotti himself directed a filmed-for-tv version of THE MEDIUM, with a rather different and expanded score to the one now printed by Schirmer.  However, Menotti "pulled" the additional material, and it's impossible to obtain it, or the right to use it.  This is a pity, as one of the two* extra musical scenes expands Mrs Nolan's character quite a bit, and makes more sense of her  (Flora goes to Nolan's house to return the money for the seance - but Nolan refuses it, and on top of that, claims to have found the missing locket which she didn't know about in Act One - thus making one of Monica's fake prophesies into a ghastly truth.  Menotti reworked this moment into a 20-second insertion into his revised Act Two (immediately after "Not to know my own daughter's voice?  Could that be, could that be?"), but if you blink you'd miss it).  The film version starred Marie Powers,  who was then over 60,  and unfortunately she shouts most of it instead of singing it.  It was a bravura performance for a lady of her age,  but if Monica is supposed to be 17 as in the libretto,  this pegs Flora's age at 35-45 at maximum...   it's not an "old battleaxe" part at all,  although it became known as one from Powers's appearance in the film.

* The second additional scene was a huge mistake, showing Monica and Toby sneaking out to the fairground after Flora's gone to bed - it adds nothing to the story, and dilutes the plot

Sadly not, IGI!  I've only ever done TELEPHONE and MEDIUM.  The orchestral resources required for THE CONSUL are colossal, and beyond the pockets of our modest sponsors and tiddly financial support.  There was an ENO production donkey's years ago, staged by my one-time colleague David Ritch.   My sometime collaborator Susan Bullock sang Magda on the Richard Hickox recording of the piece cut in 1999 - apparently Menotti had lavished endless time coaching the team of soloists personally for the recording.  He was particularly anxious that the "stereo shape" of the final result should sound dramatically credible.

I would love to take a crack at HELP! HELP! THE GLOBOLINKS! sometime, although it hasn't got any mothers...  the kids are all at boarding school, and no parents are around.  Technical facilities (both for the electronic sounds of the Globolinks, and their corporeal appearance on stage) have moved on a lot, and it would make a great show   There's a DVD of the Hamburg Phil made-for-tv production (directed by GCM in person) which has Edith Mathis as Emily (in a German-translation production).  One role that would be easy for me to cast would be Madame Euterpova, a domineering Music Teacher from Russia, who saves the world from the Globolinks by mustering the School Band to defeat them    No shortage of "assertive" XL-sized Russian sopranos round here )  Although finding a baritone who can play the euphonium might be a bit harder

Not so much mumsy as fiercely maternal.  It is the combination of what are often opposites in the person of Norma, both musically and dramatically, that make the work stand head and shoulders above every other bel canto opera before Rigoletto, or at least Verdi.  She is tender and fierce, vulnerable and brave and her music is both technically brilliant and heartfelt.  Pollione finds her scary, but serve him right as the biggest s**t tenor in opera, even counting B F Pinkerton.

Other mothers:

Couple in Janacek, not principally thought of as such.

Really scary ones in Strauss

One in Donizetti who has already featured under disguises and drinking songs.

A number of incidental mothers in Rossini.

A magnificent mother in Monteverdi.

I can think of one rather impressive mother in Handel, and they may well be more there.

I still get the impression that fathers, or father figures are more frequent.

No but, she fits the bill.  The mother I was thinking of figures in one of the favourite works on your poll.  She keeps on singing laments.  In fact I can't remember her doing much else.  Very beautiful, but they do go on a bit.

And come on, Wagner....

Is your other one Weil, (total shot in the dark) ?

Chiz, a moment of actual salaried work on the telephone,  and PW has beaten me to Erda! 


Yes, Weill it is, his last collaboration with Brecht, and the premiere choreographed by Balanchine into the bargain