Early Years and Personal Life
A son of Francis J. Phelan of Philadelphia, Phelan studied at the Goodman Theater in Chicago, and with Lee Strasberg in New York, and participated in the American Shakespeare Festival.
In the mid-1960s, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Gian Carlo Menotti began working frequently with Phelan, then a young actor and figure skater. Phelan began to appear in many of Gian Carlo Menotti's performances. He appeared as a mime in such Menotti operas as The Medium, The Saint of Bleecker Street and The Egg. The two developed a relationship, and in 1974, Gian Carlo Menotti legally adopted Phelan, known as Chip, as his son. Francis Phelan took the last name of Menotti.
On August 24, 1985, at Yester Parish Church, in Gifford, East Lothian, Scotland, Francis Menotti married Malinda Fitler Murphy (1960–2005), the youngest daughter of Dr. James S. Murphy and his former wife, Happy, the widow of Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller. Gian Carlo Menotti's nearby home, Yester House, was given to the couple as a wedding present.
The Menottis had two sons, Claudio (born 1987) and Cosimo (born 1991). Malinda Menotti died on 24 October 2005.
Read more about this topic: Francis Menotti
Famous quotes containing the words personal life, early, years, personal and/or life:
“He hadn’t known me fifteen minutes, and yet he was ... ready to talk ... I was still to learn that Munshin, like many people from the capital, could talk openly about his personal life while remaining a dream of espionage in his business operations.”
—Norman Mailer (b. 1923)
“As I went forth early on a still and frosty morning, the trees looked like airy creatures of darkness caught napping; on this side huddled together, with their gray hairs streaming, in a secluded valley which the sun had not penetrated; on that, hurrying off in Indian file along some watercourse, while the shrubs and grasses, like elves and fairies of the night, sought to hide their diminished heads in the snow.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We do not count a man’s years until he has nothing else to count.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“We should seek by all means in our power to avoid war, by analysing possible causes, by trying to remove them, by discussion in a spirit of collaboration and good will. I cannot believe that such a programme would be rejected by the people of this country, even if it does mean the establishment of personal contact with the dictators.”
—Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940)
“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)