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Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007)

Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship.
Born: July 7, 1911, Cadegliano-Viconago
Died: February 1, 2007, Monte Carlo, Monaco
Education: Curtis Institute of Music
Milan Conservatory
Lived: Capricorn, Capricorn, Haines Road, west of Croton Lake Road, Mt Kisco, NY 10549, USA (41.23958, -73.73527)
Yester House, Gifford, Haddington, East Lothian EH41 4JF, UK (55.89542, -2.73147)
Buried: Yester Kirk, Gifford, East Lothian, Scotland
Movies: The Medium, Menotti: Help, Help the Globolinks, Amahl and the Night Visitors, The Telephone
Children: Francis Menotti

Samuel Barber was a composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. He is one of the most celebrated composers of the 20th century: music critic Donal Henahan stated, "Probably no other American composer has ever enjoyed such early, such persistent and such long-lasting acclaim." He was twice awarded the Pulitzer Prize for music, for his opera Vanessa and his Concerto for Piano and Orchestra. At 14, he entered the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where he studied piano with Isabelle Vengerova, composition with Rosario Scalero, and voice with Emilio de Gorgoza. He began composing seriously in his late teenage years. Around the same time, he met fellow Curtis schoolmate Gian Carlo Menotti, who became his partner in life as well as in their shared profession. Menotti supplied the libretto (text) for Barber's opera, Vanessa. Menotti also contributed the libretto for Barber's chamber opera A Hand of Bridge. Barber's Antony and Cleopatra was commissioned to open the new Metropolitan Opera House at Lincoln Center in 1966. In recent years, a revised version for which Menotti provided collaborative assistance has enjoyed some success.
Together from 1929 to 1981: 52 years.
Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007)
Samuel Osmond Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981)



Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
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Thomas Schippers was an American conductor. He was highly regarded for his work in opera. Regrettably, soon after building the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra's international reputation and recording with them, he died of lung cancer at the early age of 47. It was around 1949 that Thomas Schippers met the composer Gian Carlo Menotti while accompanying a singer for an audition. This eventually led to a long-term collaboration with Menotti. Following the 1950 premiere of Menotti's opera The Consul, Schippers began conducting it on Broadway and in 1951 directed the milestone premiere television performance of Menotti's Christmas Opera Amahl and the Night Visitors broadcast live on national television on Dec. 24. According to the professor, writer, and opera scholar John Louis DiGaetani, Schippers had a lengthy romantic relationship with Menotti, in addition to a shorter romantic relationship with mathematician Sean Clarke. A biography of Leonard Bernstein states that Schippers and Bernstein also were intimately involved.
They met in 1949 and remained friends until Schippers’s death in 1977: 28 years.
Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007)
Thomas Schippers (March 9, 1930 – December 16, 1977)



Days of Love edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1500563325
ISBN-10: 1500563323
Release Date: September 21, 2014
CreateSpace Store: https://www.createspace.com/4910282
Amazon (print): http://www.amazon.com/dp/1500563323/?tag=elimyrevandra-20
Amazon (kindle): http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00MZG0VHY/?tag=elimyrevandra-20

In 1943, Samuel Barber and Gian Carlo Menotti purchased a house in Mount Kisco, New York.
Address: Capricorn, Haines Road, west of Croton Lake Road, Mt Kisco, NY 10549, USA (41.23958, -73.73527)
Type: Private Property
Place
Mount Kisco is a village and a town in Westchester County, New York. The Town of Mount Kisco is coterminous with the village. The population was 10,877 at the 2010 census. The Village of Mount Kisco was incorporated in 1875 and was partly in the towns of Bedford and New Castle. In 1978, the village chose to become a town in its own right and joined several villages in the state that have made same choice. According to the town’s official web site, Kisco is derived from an Indian word –either kiskamenahook meaning “settlement near a brook” or cisqua meaning “a muddy place.” Mount comes from the 623-foot hill northwest of town. The Mount Kisco Municipal Complex was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1997. Merestead, St. Mark’s Cemetery, and the United Methodist Church and Parsonage are also listed.
Life
Who: Samuel Osborne Barber II (March 9, 1910 – January 23, 1981)
For three years, 1939–42, Samuel Barber taught at the Curtis Institute, but in 1942 he joined the U.S. Army Air Forces, becoming its resident composer. In 1943, a gift from Bok enabled Barber and Menotti to buy a house in Mt. Kisco, New York, which they named Capricorn. They were regularly visited by a wide variety of artists and intellectuals, and their domestic happiness brought greater productivity for both composers. At the peak of his powers, Barber unveiled “Medea,” his ballet score for the Martha Graham Dance Company, in 1946; “Knoxville, Summer of 1915,” a song with orchestra, in 1947; and his lone piano sonata in 1949. (All are still in the world repertory; in 1953 Barber reworked his ballet score for orchestra and soprano, as “Medea’s Meditation and Dance of Vengeance,” Op. 23a.) His opera “Vanessa” (1958) received its premiere at the Metropolitan Opera, won a Pulitzer Prize, and became the first American opera performed at Austria’s Salzburg Festival. He wrote three works for the opening of Lincoln Center, including the opera “Antony and Cleopatra,” his second commission for the Met. When the premiere of “Antony and Cleopatra” was hammered by the critics, Barber withdrew to a villa in Italy, where he battled depression. He and his lifelong partner, Menotti, separated and Capricorn, their home, was sold. Barber continued to compose in New York City but drank too much. Cared for by Menotti, he died of cancer and was buried in Oaklands Cemetery in the town of his birth, West Chester, Pennsylvania.



Queer Places, Vol. 1 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532901904
ISBN-10: 1532901909
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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Yester House is an early XVIII-century mansion near Gifford in East Lothian, Scotland. It was the home of the Hay family, later Marquesses of Tweeddale, from the XV century until the 1970s.
Address: Gifford, Haddington, East Lothian EH41 4JF, UK (55.89542, -2.73147)
Type: Private House
Historic Scotland Building ID: 14693 (Category A, 1971)
Place
Construction of the present house began in 1699, and continued well into the 18th century in a series of building phases. It is now protected as a category A listed building, and the grounds of the house are included in the Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes in Scotland, the national listing of significant gardens. The lands of Yester were granted to Hugo de Giffard, a Norman, in the XII century. Yester Castle, around 1 mile (1.6 km) south-east of the present house, was built by the Giffords in the later XIII century. The heiress of the Giffords married into the Hay family, who were raised to the peerage in 1488 as Lord Hay of Yester. In 1646 the 8th Lord Hay was created Earl of Tweeddale, and considered the building of a new house at Yester. The 1st Earl acquired his title for his support of Charles I, but later served in two Commonwealth Parliaments. His son, the 2nd Earl of Tweeddale, was appointed to the Privy Council of Scotland after the Restoration. He began improvements to the estate, including the planting of over 6,000 acres (2,400 ha) of woodland. It was around this time that the medieval village of Yester was moved to its current location at Gifford. The Earl consulted Sir William Bruce in 1670, with a view to commissioning a new house, although nothing was done at this time. Formal gardens were established and parkland laid out through the 1680s and 1690s. For his support of William of Orange, the 2nd Earl was appointed Lord Chancellor of Scotland in 1692 and 1st Marquess of Tweeddale in 1694. John Hay, 2nd Marquess of Tweeddale, who inherited the estate in 1697, appointed James Smith and Alexander McGill to begin work on a new house in 1697. The 2nd Marquess supported the Acts of Union and served at Westminster as a representative peer. When he died in 1713 the building work was still underway; the main house was complete by 1715, when the 3rd Marquess died. John Hay, 4th Marquess of Tweeddale, also served as a representative peer from 1722. The interior of the house was complete by 1728, but in 1729 the 4th Marquess appointed William Adam to make alterations to the roof and main façade, and in the mid-1730s to the interiors. William was succeeded as architect at Yester by his sons Robert and John, who carried out alterations inside in 1761, and another redesign of the façade in the 1780s, as well as redesigning the gardens in an informal style in the 1760s. The house was altered in the 1830s, with the entrance moved to the west front, and was modernised at the end of the XIX century by Robert Rowand Anderson for the 11th Marquess. The estate was sold after the death of David Hay, 12th Marquess of Tweeddale, in 1967. In 1972 it was bought by the Italian-American composer Gian Carlo Menotti because of the acoustics of the ballroom. After Menotti's death, the house was marketed by his family with a price of between £12 million and £15 million. According to the sales particulars the house has a gross internal area of 3,213 square metres (34,580 sq ft). In September 2010 the guide price was reduced to £8 million, with the exclusion of 120 hectares (300 acres) of woodlands from the sale.
Life
Who: Gian Carlo Menotti (July 7, 1911 – February 1, 2007)
Gian Carlo Menotti was an Italian-American composer and librettist. Although he often referred to himself as an American composer, he kept his Italian citizenship. Samuel Barber became Menotti's partner in life and in work, with Menotti crafting the libretto for Barber's most famous opera, “Vanessa,” which premiered at the Metropolitan Opera in 1958. As a student, Menotti spent much of his time with the Samuel Barber family in West Chester, Pennsylvania. After graduation, the two men bought a house together in Mount Kisco, New York, which they named "Capricorn" and shared for over forty years. In 1974, Menotti adopted Francis "Chip" Phelan, an American actor and figure skater he had known since the early 1960s. In the same year, Menotti, persuaded by the good acoustics of the main room, purchased the ancestral home of the Marquess of Tweeddale, Yester House, in the village of Gifford, East Lothian, in Scotland. While there, he jokingly referred to himself as "Mr McNotti". Menotti founded the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto, Italy in 1958, and its companion festival, Spoleto Festival USA, in Charleston, South Carolina in 1977. For three weeks each summer, Spoleto is visited by nearly a half-million people. Barber died of cancer in 1981 in New York City at the age of 70. He was buried in Oaklands Cemetery in his hometown of West Chester, Pennsylvania. The plot next to him was for Menotti, but when Menotti died in 2007 he chose to be buried at the Yester Kirk (Gifford, Haddington, East Lothian EH41).



Queer Places, Vol. 2 edited by Elisa Rolle
ISBN-13: 978-1532906312
ISBN-10: 1532906315
Release Date: July 24, 2016
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