Amahl and the Night Visitors is an opera in one act by the Italian-born American composer Gian Carlo Menotti. Menotti wrote both the music and the libretto (text). See Menotti, Gian Carlo. The opera was inspired by the painting The Adoration of the Magi by the Dutch Renaissance artist Hieronymus Bosch. It was the first opera written specifically for television and received its first performance in a broadcast by the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) in the United States on Dec. 24, 1951. The first stage performance took place at Indiana University, Bloomington, on Feb. 21, 1952.