A Christmas Carol

Libretto by Susanne Felicitas Wolf after Charles Dickens (G)

S,T,Bar,2speaking roles;
cl(=bcl)-hn-perc(1):SD/BD/vib/2wdbl/glsp/xyl/susp.cym/cyms/metal wind chimes/tgl/2tpl.bl/2tom-t/tamb-pft-vlc;
also version with enlarged speaking parts: 120 minutes

Ebenezer Scrooge, owner of a London money exchange, has only one passion: money – as long as it goes into his own pocket and stays there. Fundraisers are piercingly rebuffed: charity, are they mad? What is the point of poorhouses, asylums and prisons? The old miser refuses to give his clerk Bob Cratchit time off for Christmas and in a fit of disgust, he rejects his nephew Fred’s invitation to the festivities.

Then the ghost of his business partner Marley, who died seven years ago, appears and warns him not to waste his life and fall into eternal damnation. ”Do better than I did, open your heart, be a good man!” Scrooge will be relentlessly tested by three more spirits that night. Indeed: the first to appear is the Ghost of the Christmas Past, who shows Scrooge his former childhood and youth, full of family happiness, Christmas joy and the prospect of love – but then his fiancée Belle eventually turned away from the increasingly insensitive Scrooge. Second, the Ghost of Christmas Present shows him Bob Cratchit’s pitiful home. The sight of his sick son, who may not live to see another Christmas, begins to move Scrooge. Finally, the Ghost of Christmas Future leads him to the cemetery to his own grave, which is visited and tended by no one. “Here lies Ebenezer Scrooge, who had no heart for others and died as he lived: alone.” And right next to it, Cratchit’s family sheds hot tears over their deceased little son.

Scrooge is converted. He sets off, makes generous Christmas purchases for everyone, shows himself to be charitable, sends a festive roast and a doctor to Cratchit as well as vastly increasing his wages and, laden with gifts, accepts his nephew’s invitation. He has understood the meaning of Christmas.

Poetic