Moving to the US in his teens, Gian Carlo Menotti enrolled at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute where fellow students included Bernstein and Barber, who would become Menotti’s life partner and collaborator. Amelia Goes to the Ball (1937) proved an immediate success at the Metropolitan Opera, but he really consolidated his position with The Medium. This short opera has a puzzling if not precious plot about a séance that goes wrong, The Telephone (a ménàge à trois around a troubled couple), was originally commissioned to pad out an evening’s listening. They showed the composer to be a conservative who wrote in a lyrical style reminiscent of Puccini (Boulez wickedly referred to Menotti as the “Puccini of the poor”).