I have two vivid memories of being a child in the 1950s: polio vaccinations and the annual visit of Giancarlo Menotti’s “Amahl and the Night Visitors” into my living room. Because it was repeated every December of my youth on the “NBC Opera Theatre,” Menotti’s opera is synonymous with Christmas for my generation of American classical music fans. On Saturday the Amato Opera presented it for its original target audience, an auditorium filled with small children.

Menotti was the first composer to recognize the tremendous potential of television for the dissemination of opera. His predictions turned out to be true, when it was estimated that more people watched one individual performance of Carmen mounted by the BBC in the 1960s than the total number who had ever seen the work onstage since its premiere in 1875. Menotti opened his one-act “The Medium” in 1948 and “The Saint of Bleecker Street” in 1954. But it was on Christmas Eve of 1951, in a simple story of the nativity, that he found his true voice.

The story of the opera is simple yet poignant, inspired by Menotti’s viewing of “The Adoration of the Magi” by Hieronymous Bosch at the Metropolitan Museum. Amahl, a crippled shepherd boy, is berated by his mother for lying after he tells her that there is a gigantic star in the sky. Later that evening, she threatens to spank him for saying that there are three kings at the door. The visitors spend the night and tell of the baby they are to visit. Once they are asleep, the mother attempts to steal some of their gold, but, when she is found out, the wise men tell her that their newborn king will forgive her. Amahl wishes to give the child a gift and offers his only possession, his crutch. Once he hands it to the magi, he can walk unaided. He leaves with the three men to go to Bethlehem.

Having been developed for the small screen, the opera seemed perfect for Amato’s little stage. The troupe often sings among the paying customers and, when the star leads the visitors forward to their ultimate destination, it is into the crowd they walk. Even the instrumentation reinforced the intimacy of the piece, as pianist Pei-Wen Chen performed the keyboard reduction alone, while maestro Andrew Whitfield conducted the singers.

Those singers were all very good. Kathy Enders did an excellent job as the mother, a somewhat conflicted character who exhibits quite a bit of human frailty but is always motivated by her desire to keep her son alive. Ms. Enders was especially impressive in the central quartet in which the three wise men sing of their child and she of her own. Garth Taylor and Robert Leuze were strong and deep-voiced as rather imposing rulers and provided solid grounding for the ensemble pieces.

Simon Bloch was a well-cast Amahl, very good as an actor and plucky as a vocalist. In fact, his untrained voice enhanced the overall characterization as heroic against all odds. He was very convincing in the “Mother, mother” song as he tries to make himself believed, employing music that Menotti borrowed — either consciously or not — from Franz Schubert’s Erlkoenig, another work about a child who cannot make his parent see what is in the corner of the room. Mark W. Bentley was wonderful as the deaf king Kasper, whose big number, “This Is My Box,” has been rattling around in my inner ear for over 50 years. It is a delight of a set piece, especially appealing to little boys who find the idea that a king would not travel without a container of magic stones and licorice perfectly understandable. And in a pivotal role, Martha Bennett can grow up and someday tell her own children how she was once, quite literally, the Star of the Amato Opera.

The Amato staff are lovely people and telephoned recently to inform me that I needn’t rush to get to this performance on time, as they planned to begin the event with carol singing for the children. Of course, I arrived early and enjoyed the informal music immensely, being, after all, the biggest kid in the room.