Menotti’s opera about a fake medium and her fear that she may have conjured up something
actually supernatural…
[Owosso Argus-Press, August 7, 1947—“Music Notebook” by Al Haynes] “The radio premiere of
Gian-Carlo Menotti’s opera, ‘The Medium,’ together with the short opera, ‘The Telephone,’ are on
the CBS Symphony program…with Alfredo Antonini conducting. The original Broadway cast will
sing ‘The Medium’…
“‘The Medium’ is remarkable in that one of the characters is a deaf-mute. The opera, as
fascinated audiences have discovered at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre since last April, is a horror
story about a fake medium, Madame Flora, who during the course of a phony séance, suddenly
feels the touch of a cold hand on her throat. Unable to discover from her daughter, Monica, or
from the mute Toby, her adopted son, whether it is a prank or really the hand of the dead, she
becomes horribly afraid, her imagination playing havoc with her sanity. She finally kills someone
who is hiding behind a curtain—it turns out to be Toby—and shrieks ‘I’ve killed the ghost, I’ve
killed the ghost.’
“A great deal of painstaking work is going into the business of making Toby a character of
substance to the listening audience. There have been other problems, too, in transforming a work
conceived as visual theatre, into intelligible radio music-drama. The performance this Sunday will
be of great interest to every lover of serious music.”
August 10, 1947“The Telephone” / “The Medium”