Performance events for the holidays come in two flavors: the perennial, virtually inescapable classics (Nutcracker, Messiah, A Christmas Carol, and — let's not forget — It's a Wonderful Life), and other events offering variations on holiday themes.
A. The Classics
Nutcracker
Nutcracker, THE engine for most ballet companies' annual budget (and survival), is all around, but we'll list only three here. First, the question: "Why Nutcracker?" After experiencing more than a hundred performances and rehearsals over the years, and never getting tired of it, I figured it's something singular and peculiar about me. Until, with fortuitous timing, the Nov. 22 New York Times and Alastair Macaulay came to the rescue:
Nutcracker is among the most layered of all works of art. Yes, it contains kitsch and cuteness and adorability. Yes, it’s surrounded by merchandising. Even so, this ballet is larger, stranger, more moving than all of that — and more unknowable. There are mysteries at its heart that don’t vanish and wonders that don’t diminish...
[With music in which] Tchaikovsky feasted on all the layerings and contrasts that the ballet offered him; his score is a cornucopia of color, rhythm, scale, melody. In the famous overture, the high, small, short, quick notes create a sound world of childhood enchantment — but there’s a section where the rhythmic accentuation of the pizzicato under the main melody suddenly turns syncopated: a wonderfully disorienting effect. Twenty minutes later, the magical ascent of the Christmas tree produces a slow surge of utterly dissimilar invention: a colossal, awe-inspiring crescendo.
• The spectacular, expensive grandfather of them all in town is San Francisco Ballet's production, a tradition beginning in 1944 with Nutcracker's U.S. premiere.
This year, even with 29 shows between Dec. 16 and 31 in the 3,200-seat War Memorial (that's a total of 92,800), it's a difficult ticket to get, notwithstanding the price range from $75 to $410. The current production is set in San Francisco during the 1915 World’s Fair, featuring "the city's historical grandeur, amid colorful, larger-than-life scenery, showcasing 200 dazzling costumed characters." The Tchaikovsky score played by the Ballet Orchestra is a rare treat in these days of recorded music for most dance events.
• Mark Foehringer Dance Project|SF’s annual Nutcracker Sweets, taking place Dec. 12-22 in Cowell Theater, is with a live chamber orchestra, conducted by Michael Morgan. It's Frédéric O. Boulay's production, with sets by Peter Crompton, costumes by Richard Battle, and lighting design by Patrick Hajduk. Tickets run from $21 to $31 for the 50-minute show without intermission.
• The gold standard of George Balanchine's choreography for Nutcracker was created in 1954, a full decade after Willam Christensen's U.S. premiere in San Francisco, and it has thrived for the past 60 years. A Digital Cinema presentation of the New York City Ballet performance will be shown on Saturday, Dec. 5, in movie theaters, beginning at 1 p.m. Among the participating local theaters: Century 20 Daly City, tickets range from $16 to $18. NYCB principal dancers Megan Fairchild and Joaquin De Luz are the Sugarplum Fairy and her Cavalier, with Ashley Bouder as Dewdrop; Clotilde Otranto conducts the New York City Ballet Orchestra. Some theaters repeat the HD cast at 7 p.m. Dec. 10.
Messiah
Handel's Messiah is the most popular and enduring of the classical holiday fare, with music that surpasses the encumbrance of repetition (and no, you don't have to stand for the Hallelujah Chorus, whatever King George II might have done in 1743; on the other hand, a stretch may feel good).
• The best is the biggest here too, San Francisco Symphony's performances, Dec. 17-19, conducted by the brilliant S.F. Symphony Chorus Director, Ragnar Bohlin, and featuring Sarah Coburn, Lauren Segal, Brian Stucki, and Adam Lau. Ticket prices range from $38 to $138.
• Nicholas McGegan and the Philharmonia Baroque Orchestra will perform Handel's final, "Foundling Hospital version," of Messiah on Dec. 19 in Berkeley's First Congregational Church. Handel himself conducted fundraising performances in the hospital annually and left the final manuscript to the institution. where it's still kept. Amanda Forsythe, Meg Bragle, Isaiah Bell, and Philip Cutlip are the soloists. Tickets are priced from $25 to $105.
• American Bach Soloists' Messiah will be heard in Grace Cathedral, Dec. 16-18, conducted by Jeffrey Thomas, with soloists Hélène Brunet, Agnes Vojtko, Kyle Stegall, and Jesse Blumberg. Similar to the Philharmonia Baroque, ABS also uses a Foundling Hospital version. Tickets: $20 to $105.
It's a Wonderful Life
The biggest Christmas perennial formerly in movie theaters and now on TV is It's a Wonderful Life, but neither in a movie theater nor on TV will you ever see it the way S.F. Symphony is offering it in Davies Hall on Dec. 11 and 12, with the orchestra playing Dimitri Tiomkin's score.
As he wrote in his 1959 autobiography, Please Don't Hate Me, Tiomkin liked the film, but not what happened to his music:
The picture was in the best Capra style. Frank [Capra] thinks it the finest he ever made. I never saw it after it was completed. After the music was on the soundtrack, Frank cut it, switched sections around, and patched it up, an all-around scissors job. After that I didn't want to hear it.
However the composer might have felt, Capra's treatment of the film and music added up to one of the most durable works to come out of Hollywood.
B. Variations on Holiday Themes
• Now through Dec. 13, 42nd Street Moon presents the world premiere of Scrooge in Love!, a post-transformation story about the formerly miserly Scrooge, who has yet another encounter with a ghost, this time to reconnect with Belle, who might have been his love of life... and now, who knows? (Although musicals usually have a happy ending.) The composer is Larry Grossman, Duane Poole wrote the book, Kellen Blair the lyrics.
• From Nov. 28 until just before Christmas Day, Chanticleer will circle Northern California with a dozen performances of its famed Christmas program, telling the story in Gregorian chant, Renaissance polyphony, traditional carols, Franz Biebl’s “Ave Maria,” and Chanticleer’s traditional medley of spirituals.
• Among the San Francisco Symphony's numerous holiday programs, such as "Deck the Halls," is "A Classic Christmas" in Davies Hall, at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 9 and 10. Teddy Abrams conducts the program of music by Rutter, Vivaldi, Tchaikovsky, Vaughan Williams, and Rimsky-Korsakov; violinist Elena Urioste and the San Francisco Girls Chorus (Valérie Saint-Agathe, music director) are featured. Tickets: $15-$135
• Ragazzi Continuo (alumni of the boys' chorus) sings a program called “Carols Ancient and New” in Palo Alto (Dec. 12), Redwood City (Dec. 19), and San Francisco (Dec. 20), of Christmas favorites from near and far. Selections include the spiritual "Glory Hallelu!" by Don Besig, Robert Kyr's setting of "Balulalow,” David Conte's arrangement of "Pat-a-pan," Phillip Lawson's interpretation of "Veni, Veni Emmanuel," and the traditional Nigerian Christmas song, "Betelehemu.”
* The Choral Project joins San José Chamber Orchestra to celebrate the chorus' 20th season and the orchestra's 25th with a program called "Winter’s Gifts: Celebration." The program includes premiere of a commission by Richard Burchard, a new composition by conductor Daniel Hughes, the music of Healey Willan, Ennio Morricone, and Václav Nelhýbel. Hughes and Barbara Day Turner conduct the concerts on Dec. 19 in Palo Alto's First Presbyterian Church, and on Dec. 20 in Santa Clara's Mission Santa Clara de Asís.
* The Future Is Now: Adler Fellows Gala Concert is a holiday in itself, celebrating young talent ready to rule the world's opera stages. The event returns to Herbst Theater, beginning at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 12, tickets: $30-$65. 2015 Adlers — Maria Valdes, Zanda Švede, Nian Wang, Chong Wang, Edward Nelson among them — will be accompanied by the S.F. Opera Orchestra, conducted by Stephen Lord.
• Conservatory singers give voice to the season's full spectrum of the season in a choral Christmas Concert at 2 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 13. Faculty member and S.F. Symphony Chorus Director Ragnar Bohlin leads the Chamber Choir in a program including music by Schubert, Fauré, and Sixten. Eric Choate '14, director of the Conservatory Chorus, conducts traditional carols and works by Britten, Bartók, and Palestrina. Admission is free.
• New Century Chamber Orchestra, the San Francisco Girls Chorus, and klezmer clarinetist David Krakauer collaborate on "Holiday Lights," Dec. 17-20. Christmas carols, holiday music by Charles Gounod, Bach, and John Jacob Niles are performed on the same program with Krakauer's Eastern European Jewish klezmer music, including such traditional works as "Hanukkah O Hanukkah," "Wedding Dance," "Der Gasn Nign," and "Der Heyser Bulgar." The concert will be performed in First Congregational Church, Berkeley; First United Methodist Church, Palo Alto; Herbst Theater, San Francisco, and Osher Marin JCC, San Rafael. An open rehearsal at 10 a.m. on Dec. 16, in Kanbar Performing Arts Center offers a sneak preview of the concert repertoire, tickets priced at $15.