Along with the numerous professional and semi-professional performances of opera in the New York area, the schools of music often present works that are interesting for their rarity. Such was the case at the Manhattan School on December 5, with a double bill of one-act operas by prolific composers, one written at the outset of a long career and one near the end.

Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amelia Goes to the Ball (1937) was his first big hit, and it still retains its youthful insouciance. It can be argued that Amelia displays his genuine talent for comedy and parody more successfully than most of his subsequent works. It is inspired fluff: about a wife with the tenacity of an operatic diva who insists on going to the first big ball of the season. Of course, in the end, she gets her way (with the Chief of Police) after the Husband and Lover have been discarded. Menotti’s music—resolutely tonal and indebted more to Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari than to Puccini—has a freshness that it would soon lose, and if the work is treated as a light-as-air trifle, it can succeed.

Robert Ward, whose distinguished career as an opera composer is highlighted by his version of Arthur Miller’s Crucible, set to music the Edith Wharton short story Roman Feverin 1993. (He was then in his seventies; he is now in his vigorous eighties.) Ward’s consummate gift for writing vocal music is ever in evidence in his handling of this tale