Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007) is best known for composing operas and writing librettos for them that were beloved by the public, if not the critics. The son of an Italian coffee importer, he was forced to study in America due to his family’s financial circumstances. There he met the composer Samuel Barber, whom he lived with for 40 years and also collaborated on two operas with. He also made his reputation with his 1946 opera The Medium, his one-woman opera The Telephone, and his Christmas opera for TV Amahl and the Night Visitors. Two of his operas won Pulitzer Prizes, The Consul and The Saint of Bleecker Street.