Amahl and the Night Visitors was a one-act production by Gian Carlo Menotti that was the first opera specifically composed for television in America.
The story: One night in Judea, a disabled shepherd boy-turned-beggar and his mother are visited by the Three Kings who are on their way to Bethlehem to visit the newborn Christ Child.
The opera was first performed by the NBC Opera Theatre on Christmas Eve December 24, 1951, in New York City as a live broadcast from the Rockefeller Center. It was the debut production of the Hallmark Hall of Fame.