‘Amahl’ Brevity Proves Blessing

One of the better things about Gian Carlo Menotti’s one-act opera “Amahl and the Night Visitors” is that it’s over in less than an hour.

Written for a Christmas Eve television broadcast in 1951 (they actually wrote opera for television in the good old days), it tells of a poor, crippled shepherd boy who, when visited by the Three Kings on their way to see the Christ child, offers his homemade crutch as a gift to the baby in the manger and thereby is cured. Depending on your point of view, it’s saccharine or it’s heartwarming or it’s an instant holiday classic. It sure ain’t Shakespeare.

Still, Menotti set his little tale (in English) with considerable musical skill, using brief, catchy melodic fragments, rhythmical speech/song and a colorful orchestration that evokes the ancient Middle East. The work requires the technical accomplishment of operatic voices, including a boy soprano of uncommon acting and singing ability.

And as such, “Amahl”--which started a two-week run at the Gem Theatre on Sunday night--is well beyond anything the little Musical Theatre Company could muster. Don’t blame the singers: They were merely stuck in mud not of their own choosing. They gave it the old college try. If fingers must be pointed, point them at producer and director (and executive director of the company) George Quick.

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Not only did he choose (or acquiesce to) the wrong vehicle for his young ensemble (in its second season) but he had the nerve to update its setting. In this low-rent version, accompanied by piano, the title character no longer is a shepherd boy with shepherd’s pipe in the Holy Land but a modern-day waif who lives in a back alley. Chain-link fences, a trash can with a fire in it, a stack of discarded tires and a shopping cart become the milieu.

And by the use of a very tired framing device, Quick turns the opera itself into a dream. If only it had been.

* The Musical Theater Company production of “Amahl and the Night Visitors” by Gian Carlo Menotti continues through Dec. 24 at the Gem Theatre, 12852 Main St., Garden Grove. Thursdays through Saturdays at 8 p.m., Sundays at 7 p.m. $15 to $35. (714) 741-9550.