Gian Carlo Menotti was one of the most significant composers to come forward after the Second World War. A self-confessed and unrepentant traditionalist, he continued to write prolifically in his own vein, even after the fashion for his kind of music-drama had passed.

He achieved fame when his first full-length opera, The Consul, caught the imagination of the public after it was staged in New York in 1950. A newspaper article inspired the work.

A woman was trying to enter the United States and was denied permission. She committed suicide on Ellis Island, the former immigration port for foreigners wanting to become US citizens. The piece was subsequently translated into 12 languages and was performed in no fewer than 20 countries.

It immediately aroused interest in Menotti’s earlier work. He had, in fact, already established his reputation in the United States through his one-act opera buffa, Amelia al ballo, which was performed in New York under the title Amelia Goes to the Ball in 1935.

Its success prompted a commission from NBC for a radio opera. Another one-act work, The Old Maid and the Thief, was the result, and proved another success for the young composer. It led to what many consider to be Menotti’s two most successful pieces, the melodrama The Medium, which never fails to catch an audience by the throat, and The Telephone, a one-act, single-performer comedy, which became a cur-tain-raiser for The Medium.

The Consul followed, and Menotti, at the height of his powers, now seemed destined to become one of the leading opera composers of his generation. His reputation was indeed confirmed by his television opera, Amahl and the Night Visitors, in which he was influenced by Bosch’s painting, The Adoration of the Magi.

The work was first televised at Christmas 1951, and has been seen and heard countless times since, both on television and on the stage. Its easy, diatonic style and natural sentiments make it accessible to children of all ages.

Menotti never achieved that degree of success again. As the 1950s progressed a tougher school of opera writing superseded his quasi-Puccini style, and he went out of fashion. Nevertheless, both his succeeding operas have held the stage to an extent.

Menotti’s own favourite, The Saint of Bleeker Street (1954), about the conflict of the physical and spiritual worlds, and Maria Golovin (1958), another effective drama, this time about a blind man tormented with jealousy, always hold the stage when they are revived.

His later works showed him tending to repeat formulas without recapturing his old form. The Last Savage, a 20th-century morality, staged in Paris in 1963, is probably the best of them and Help! Help! The Globolinks (Hamburg, 1968) showed him once more writing with sympathy for children. Menotti, who wrote his own librettos, also contributed the book for Samuel Barber’s opera Vanessa. The composers were close friends.

From 1958 much of Menotti’s energy was taken up with the formation and running of the Festival of Two Worlds at Spoleto, which later had its US counterpart at Charleston. There Menotti felt it was his mission to present young European and American artists in favourable circumstances, that is in opera and concerts directed by often famous names.

Thomas Schippers, the music director from 1958 to 1970, worked closely with Menotti (who often directed the operas) on creating a festival that was notable for its artistic integrity and free-and-easy atmosphere. One of Spoleto’s most notable stagings was Carmen in 1962, which established the reputations of the black singers, Shirley Verrett and George Shirley. The festival was particularly notable for the revival of operas by Donizetti and Mer-cadante, two of Menotti’s loves.

Gian Carlo Menotti was born in northern Italy at Ca-degliano, in Varese province, in 1911, the sixth of ten children. His father was a prosperous businessman and his mother a talented musician. He had already written two operas when he entered the Milan Conservatory at the age of 13.

In 1928 he moved to the US to study at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia where his friendship with Barber began. The pair went to festivals in Europe together in the early 1930s. Menotti decided to stay in the US in 1933.

His success with Amelia at the Ball and the works that followed it only confirmed his decision, though he never lost his love for Italy, nor indeed his gift for Italianate melody.

Menotti was in many ways a simple, childlike man. That helped him to communicate so directly with the young, many of whom corresponded with him about his operas.

Some derided his direct appeal to his audiences, but he never took umbrage, content with what he saw as his mission to bring opera to a wider public than usually attended opera houses.

Menotti conceived strong, direct stories and backed them with straightforward, tonal music, though he was quite willing to adopt certain modern techniques, such as electronic devices. Like his mentor Puccini, he believed in singable melody. From Mussorgsky, whose work he admired inordinately, he learnt the importance of dramatic effects.

Singers admired his work because, unlike his contemporaries, he wrote well for voice. Indeed, two of his later operas were inspired by famous singers requesting him to write works for them. One was La Loca, written for Beverly Sills and first staged at San Diego in 1979, tracing the tragedy of Jua-na, the unhappy daughter of Ferdinand and Isobella of Spain. Goya, written for Plácido Domingo and first staged in Washington in 1986 was based on the painter’s love for the Duchess of Alba. Neither has entered the repertoire.

In the 1970s Menotti bought an Adam manor in Scotland at the foot of Lammermoor (Donizetti’s opera was a great favourite of his). There he loved to retire to get away from his hectic life, and he was affectionately known locally as “Mc-Naughty”. He loved the Scottish countryside and its tranquillity. It somehow accorded with his romantic nature.

Yet that nature was ruled by a subtle and financially acute mind. His operas brought him appreciable wealth. Some of it was spent on keeping up his homes, in Spoleto — he retained his Italian citizenship — and New York as well as Scotland and, latterly, Monaco, where he died.

In 1974 Menotti adopted the American actor Francis Phelan, who had occasionally taken nonspeaking roles in his operas. Francis Menotti took over much of the responsibility for the Spoleto Festival and became its artistic director in 1999. Gian Carlo Menotti is survived by him.

Gian Carlo Menotti, composer, was born on July 7, 1911. He died on February 1, 2007, aged 95