The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore

  

The Unicorn is back! I mean the original recording of The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore by Gian Carlo Menotti, of Spoleto Festival fame. Released in 1957 on monaural vinyl and never reissued in digital form, this historic recording has been virtually unavailable for a quarter of a century. See details of its new availability at the end of this posting.

Menotti called The Unicorn a madrigal fable, and a fable it is: a short story with animals as characters conveying a moral. The story is told with irresistible charm and wit. The animals named in the title are imaginative creations of a Poet known by his townspeople as the strange Man in the Castle.

The fable's moral is that artistic creations are vulnerable to unfair panning by self-interested critics and to superficial imitation by a faddish public, neither of these audiences appreciating, far less sharing, the Poet's imperishable devotion to "the pain-wrought creatures" of his fancy.

The work is subtitled Three Sundays of a Poet. A Madrigal Fable for Chorus, Ten Dancers and Nine Instruments. Text by the Composer. Let's consider the phrases of this subtitle in reverse order.

Menotti wrote his own libretto, in crafty English. I find this a wonder. Menotti came to the U.S. in 1928, age 16, not knowing the language. No problem. Consider the alliteration and rhyming of Menotti's lines describing the Poet and his critics:

       He does not pause to acknowledge the racket of the critical cricket,

       Nor to confute the know-how of the sententious cow.

Or Menotti's internal rhyming as the townspeople huff over the Poet's manifold eccentricities:

       We, the few, the elect, must take things in our hands.

       We must judge those who live

           and condemn those who love.

       All passion is uncivil. All candor is suspect.

       We detest all, except, what by fashion is blest.

       And forever and ever, whether evil or good,

           we shall respect what seems clever.

Menotti's music for nine instruments is as saucy as any by Stravinsky or Poulenc, and the recording's players were among New York's most sterling. The 1957 performance by ten dancers of the New York City Ballet we shall, alas, never be able to see.

The chorus of twenty-four sings with sparkling diction. Menotti calls his piece A Madrigal Fable, and his choral writing echoes the vivacious "madrigal comedies" composed by his predecessors in 16th-century Modena.

As the subtitle Three Sundays of a Poet anticipates, the three mythical beasts represent the three stages of the poet's life—youth, mid-life, and old age—each embraced by the Poet for its peculiar and inestimable worth.

The 1957 recording was overseen by Menotti and conducted by Thomas Schippers, age 27 (who at 47 was to die of lung cancer). In recent years several groups have issued CDs of their performances of The Unicorn, but to my ears the immediacy and sprightliness of Schippers' original rendition remain unequaled.

Now the Naxos website is listing a digital reissue of the 1957 recording:

       http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=9.80407

Unfortunately, since I first posted this blog page I have had to revise these final paragraphs. Naxos has informed me that the Unicorn reissue "is exclusively available for streaming and download" and is "not available on CD." Worse than that, the notification continues: "Kindly take note that this [reissue] is not available in the United States, Australia and Singapore due to possible copyright restrictions."

However, a good clear recording of the Schippers performance is currently available on YouTube, and it would seem smart to act quickly:

        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g6zAzGrdbTw

The complete libretto together with useful notes is available, thanks to the New Mexico Tech Chamber Choir, in a PDF posting:

        http://www.aoc.nrao.edu/~bbutler/play/music/unicorn/menotti-copy6.pdf

For U.S. listeners, then, the 1957 Unicorn is only barely back. Still I feel that obtaining this forty-minute masterpiece is worth the effort. The Unicorn has many times conveyed me to an oasis of refreshment for my spirit.

[Note added November 21, 2013: I have succeeded in obtaining the Naxos CD reissue of The Unicorn, paired with Menotti's The Saint of Bleecker Street, from gregorian.com in Toronto:

        https://www.grigorian.com/webstore/main.php]

[Note added January 29, 2015: Ken Wilson has kindly notified me that a black-and-white television broadcast of The Unicorn in its original casting is now available on a DVD titled "Balanchine: New  York City Ballet in Montreal, Vol.3." It may be ordered from Video Artists International:

        www.vaimusic.com/product/4573.html?Search=Menotti.]

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