Gian Carlo Menotti: Saint Of Bleecker St (Naxos Historical Audio 2-CD set)

• Hailed as ‘the best new opera since Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess’, Gian Carlo Menotti’s The Saint of Bleecker Street won the Pulitzer Prize for Music and the New York Drama Critics Circle award for Best Musical. Its underlying themes of immigrant life and religious fervour remain topical today. The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore is part masque, part ballet and part chamber music. It presents three stages in the life of an eccentric poet, symbolised by the allegorical animals of the title.