A Christmas Carol

The old tightwad Ebenezer Scrooge, who never celebrates Christmas, caustically yelps at his loyal clerk and jolly nephew that this is yet another year in which he has no intention of getting excited about the holidays. But on the lonely Christmas Eve he is visited by the ghost of his late business partner Jacob Marley who – because he was a cheapskate just like Scrooge – has to drag heavy chains in the other world as punishment. Scrooge and Marley started their company when they were very young, then exclusively pursued profit for the rest of their lives; they never cared for the poor or the family. Yet Scrooge still has time to fix this, because Marley’s ghost predicts that three more ghosts will visit him, the ghost of the past, the present and the future. He advises him to do what they tell him, so that he won’t be doomed to dragging the chains forever after death … And indeed, Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning a new man! Some citizens are sceptical about his conversion, but he pays them no heed, because he has learnt that happiness is in sharing fortune with others.

The great English novelist Charles Dickens created one of his most important works and one of the Christmas myths of the modern time with his classical novella A Christmas Carol. He first self-published it in 1843, and it became an immediate hit and almost-required reading for generations not only in England but all over the world. This is the first story in history that includes time travel and one of the most popular ghost stories ever. In fact, it talks about how a person can change with some repentance and willpower.

Today the story is a peculiar phenomenon, traditionally revived all over the world before the holiday; more than fifty film and animated adaptations have been created, it was also published several times in Slovenia, too, and every year, a ballet based on Dickens’s script can be seen at the Opera in Ljubljana. At the SNG Nova Gorica it will be directed by Ivana Djilas who aims many of her productions to children and adults and stages them in the spirit of the innovative musical theatre.

* The production uses musical motifs of Slovene and English Christmas folk songs as well as Johann Sebastian Bach, Franz Gruber and Leopold Belar.