Dec. 24, 1951 broadcast of the first opera ever written for television. Gian Carlo Menotti’s opera about a crippled shepherd boy who encounters the three kings on their way to pay homage to the newborn Jesus was a perennial holiday favorite for decades. This was a historical broadcast and has the advantages of freshness and spontaneity, not only in the music but in the very act of being on television, which was still relatively new in 1951. For many years, the soundtrack from this very same broadcast was a top-selling LP and compact disc for RCA-Victor, but the broadcast itself hasn’t been seen in 50 years.