Amahl and the Night Visitors

Carson-Newman Opera Theatre presents Amahl and the Night Visitors
Director: Dr. Joshua Zink
Thursday April 11 – 7:30pm – Gentry Auditorium
Saturday April 13 – 2:00pm – Gentry Auditorium

Since 2017 Carson-Newman Opera Theatre has delighted audiences with fully staged productions with the mission to provide a vocational and avocational cultural experience for students. Open to all students and levels of experience. The casts range from vocal performance majors pursuing performance careers, music education majors pursuing public school teaching, other music majors, and non-majors.

Amahl and the Night Visitors is the story of a handicapped boy and his mother who are visited by the three gift-bearing kings, who are on their way to Bethlehem. Nearly beggars, Amahl and his mother can offer the regal travelers little more than “a cold fireplace and a bed of straw.” Amahl, who walks with the aid of a crutch, was a shepherd until his mother was forced to sell his sheep. The pastoral melody of his shepherd’s pipe becomes a kind of loose leitmotif, heard in the opening and closing of the work. Amahl and the Night Visitors enters the imaginal and fantastic world of childhood. It is a piece infused with magic and mystery. Its drama illuminates a world that is all too often deaf and deprived. No matter the time of year this story captures the Christmas spirit.