Amahl and The Night Visitors - Legacy

Legacy

Amahl and the Night Visitors was the first network television Christmas special to become an annual tradition. There had already been several television productions of Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol since about 1947, but they had not been shown annually or presented by the same television network, with the same general technical staff, as Amahl was. Until 1963, Amahl was nearly always presented with many of the same singers and production staff. From 1951 until 1966 it was presented every year on NBC (which commissioned Menotti to write it) on or around Christmas Eve, as an episode of an existing anthology series, such as The Alcoa Hour, NBC Television Opera, or the Hallmark Hall of Fame. The 1978 production of Amahl also premiered on NBC, before it went to cable television in the early 1980s.