Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by Gian Carlo Menotti with an original English libretto by the composer.

The composer had trouble settling on a subject for the opera, but took his inspiration from Hieronymus Bosch's The Adoration of the Magi hanging in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

In the "Production Notes" contained in the piano-vocal score he wrote: "It is the express wish of the composer that the role of Amahl should always be performed by a boy.

"[1] The booklet with the original cast recording contains the following anecdote: This is an opera for children because it tries to recapture my own childhood.

I actually never met the Three Kings—it didn't matter how hard my little brother and I tried to keep awake at night to catch a glimpse of the Three Royal Visitors, we would always fall asleep just before they arrived.

He was also rather puzzled by the fact that King Kaspar carried the myrrh, which appeared to him as a rather eccentric gift, for he never quite understood what the word meant.

Then there is the big Christmas tree in Rockefeller Plaza, the elaborate toy windows on Fifth Avenue, the one-hundred-voice choir in Grand Central Station, the innumerable Christmas carols on radio and television—and all these things made me forget the three dear old Kings of my old childhood.

I had been commissioned by the National Broadcasting Company to write an opera for television, with Christmas as deadline, and I simply didn't have one idea in my head.

One November afternoon as I was walking rather gloomily through the rooms of the Metropolitan Museum, I chanced to stop in front of the Adoration of the Kings by Hieronymus Bosch, and as I was looking at it, suddenly I heard again, coming from the distant blue hills, the weird song of the Three Kings.

I am often asked how I went about writing an opera for television, and what are the specific problems that I had to face in planning a work for such a medium.

As a matter of fact, all my operas are originally conceived for an ideal stage which has no equivalent in reality, and I believe that such is the case with most dramatic authors.

"[2] The composer appeared on-screen in the premiere to introduce the opera and give the background of the events leading up to its composition.

An estimated five million people saw the live broadcast, the largest audience ever to see a televised opera.

[10] According to The New Kobbe's Complete Opera Book, the first stage performance was presented at Indiana University Bloomington, on February 21, 1952,[11] with conductor Ernest Hoffman.

It was presented by the Opera Club at the Agassiz Theatre of Radcliffe College, under the direction of Thomas H. Phillips for the Longy School of Music.

For years, Amahl and the Night Visitors was presented live, but in 1963 it was videotaped by NBC with conductor Herbert Grossman and an all-new cast featuring Kurt Yaghjian as Amahl, Martha King as the Mother, and John McCollum, Willis Patterson, and Richard Cross as the Three Kings.

This was the first television production of "Amahl" in which the role of King Balthazar was sung by a real African-American.

Earlier productions, including the 1951 original version, had had a white man in blackface singing the role.

Menotti never approved of the 1963 production, and in May 1966 when the rights to future broadcasts reverted to him, the composer refused to allow it to be shown again.

The first performance was broadcast on December 20, 1953, with Charles Vignoles as Amahl, and Gladys Whitred as his mother.

[13] This performance was so successful that it was repeated on Christmas Eve 1954 with substantially the same cast apart from the Page sung by John Carvalho and the dancer, Betty Ferrier.

[citation needed] Amahl, a disabled boy who can walk only with a crutch, has a problem with telling tall tales.

When Amahl wakes to find the page grabbing his mother, he attacks him ("Don't You Dare!").

A kinescope of the 1955 broadcast starring Bill McIver as Amahl was digitized in 2007 and is available commercially on DVD.

Amahl and the Night Visitors was the first network television Christmas special to become an annual tradition.