Bearing gifts, we traverse afar
Country Life UK|November 30, 2022
Festive entertainment—music, ballet, pantomime— is easy to find at this time of year, but the Christmas opera is a rarer beast, suggests Henrietta Bredin
Bearing gifts, we traverse afar

YOU wouldn’t need to search for long before finding a perfect Christmas ballet: The Nutcracker is an obvious choice, with its opening scene of children decorating a Christmas tree, running about and opening presents, followed by dancing tin soldiers, mice and snowflakes and the Sugar Plum Fairy ruling over the Kingdom of Sweets. A Christmas opera is not quite so easy to find, at least not a family-friendly one. Taking an excited group of children or grandchildren to Hindemith’s The Long Christmas Dinner could end in tears. Based on Thornton Wilder’s one-act play (in turn filched by Orson Welles for a scene in Citizen Kane), it traces the history of the Bayard family over 90 years, complete with births, deaths, alcoholism and depression.

An opera that was written specifically for children, and for television, is Gian Carlo Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors. As children in Italy, Menotti and his younger brother would try to stay awake on Christmas Eve, awaiting the arrival of the Three Kings bearing presents. They each had their favourite: Gian Carlo liked King Melchior, whereas his brother preferred King Kaspar, who he insisted was kind, eccentric and very deaf. In the fullness of time, this interpretation was to make its way into the opera.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November 30, 2022 من Country Life UK.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

هذه القصة مأخوذة من طبعة November 30, 2022 من Country Life UK.

ابدأ النسخة التجريبية المجانية من Magzter GOLD لمدة 7 أيام للوصول إلى آلاف القصص المتميزة المنسقة وأكثر من 9,000 مجلة وصحيفة.

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