A new recording of this perennially popular nativity play for children (it has almost certainly been heard by more people than any other opera written this century) has been long overdue; this one will fill the bill nicely. It was made during a run of performances at Sadler's Wells theatre in London around Christmas 1986, and the recording has preserved a good sense of theatre, with audible exits, entrances and movement about an imaginary stage. The performance carries the composer's imprimatur, and one can well understand his approval of Lorna Haywood as the Mother: she is in full, fine voice and projects the character most sympathetically. The Amahl himself, James Rainbird, sings from the throat with a plaintive, tremulous reediness that will not please the starched-ruffs-and-red-cassocks brigade, but his diction is admirable and he genuinely acts (a real snap of defensive fury when the Page to the Three Kings accuses Amahl's mother of theft; believable jubilance after his lameness is miraculously cured). There is a good trio of Kings (John Dobson enjoying himself a great deal as the aged and deaf-as-a-post Kaspar) and the chorus, who have pretty well the best music in the whole piece are first class. So are the instrumental playing and the recording (which has, however, been transferred on LP at a rather low level).
Oh, of course the work's musical weaknesses are pointed up by gramophone listening: that the infallibly moving conclusion is not really a musical denouement at all, that the tunes are shortbreathed and over-reliant on ostinato and sequence, that the songs for Melchior and for the Mother don't have melodies strong enough for their function. They work, that's the point, and what one also notices on a revisit to Menotti's amazingly durable and un-dated little classic are his enviable gift for story-telling (how obvious that the Kings should arrive one by one, increasing the Mother's anger at what she believes to be Amahl's mendacious make-believe but how irresistible to an audience of children!), his talent for evocative musical gesture (Amahl's rustic piping, the pretty orientalism of the shepherds' dance again quite obvious, both of them, but could they have been done better?) and the charming, never patronizing wit and sincerity of his text. Amahl deserves its popularity and has earned a new recording.'