This article focuses on GianCarlo Menotti's new stage performance, "The Unicorn, the Gorgon and the Manticore," which had its premiere at the Library of Congress a bare eight days after the last bits of the score were given to the musicians, represents a radical change in that composer's approach to musical style and to the theatre. Menotti's musical enemies, who must have made a sizeable part of the invited audience, expected another forcible feeding of left-over Puccini. Menotti describes the work as " a madrigal fable for chorus, ten dancers and nine instruments," and to call it an opera is to beg the question. The presence of the dancers makes it possible to accelerate the timing of the piece and to present, in addition to good singing, the seductive visual spectacle that is so rarely attained in opera proper.