"Martin's Lie"
performed Mar 9, 2003

Gian Carlo Menotti was born in Northern Italy in 1911 into a cultured family. He began to compose songs at the age of seven, and operas four years later. In 1923, he enrolled at the Milan Conservatory, but after his father's death his mother took him to the United States, to the Curtis Institute of Music where he was to study with Rosario Scalero and find his lifelong friend, companion, and collaborator, Samuel Barber, who was also a Curtis student.

Celebrity arrived with Menotti's one-act opera buffa Amelia goes to the Ball. A CBS commission followed, then ballet, a piano concerto and international success with the operas The Medium and The Telephone. Two subsequent operas won Pulitzer prizes, and his children's opera for television Amahl and the Night Visitors (1951) has become an enduring classic.

Martin's Lie was commissioned by CBS Television, but premiered in Bristol Cathedral on June 3, 1964. If Amahl was written for the young - or the innocent in each of us - the intensity of Martin's Lie is clearly aimed at adults.

The opera is set in the 14^th century, when, as Menotti explains, "tolerance was considered weakness and cruelty a necessity." The scene takes place in a convent, converted to a home for orphan boys. Naninga, the kindly housekeeper, tells the boys a bedtime fairy story, insists they say their prayers with Father Cornelius, and leaves Martin to sleep by himself in the pantry to guard the food from rats. As he settles, fearfully, for sleep, violent knocking shakes the door, with a voice crying for help.

The Stranger explains that he is fleeing torture and burning because "I choose to pray to God in my own way." At first, Martin doesn't want to help the man, but accidentally reveals, "It was not you I was waiting for but my father." The Stranger convinces Martin that they were brought together for a reason, and that he may actually be Martin's father, so Martin hides the Stranger when the Sheriff approaches. The Sheriff explains to Father Cornelius and Naninga that the King has ordered the death of a heretic, whom neighbors saw enter the convent. He accuses Martin of protecting the fugitive.

Martin claims the Stranger as his father. Soldiers enter and prepare to search. The Sheriff threatens Martin with violence and even death, but Martin refuses to reveal the location of the Stranger. When the Sheriff's henchmen approach, Martin collapses from the strain and dies. As he falls, the priest whispers "whoever he was, he was your father," and to the Sheriff says, "A lie is a little thing, my lord. I have learned that love is stronger than any sin."