The Nutcrack­er
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s en­chant­ing mu­sic has be­come a Christ­mas clas­sic. This en­chant­ing stage ad­ap­tion of the Salzburg Ma­ri­on­ette Theatre con­jures up the bal­let a mar­vel­lous ex­per­i­ence for the en­tire fam­ily. The ma­ri­on­ettes make the bal­let alive in a mi­ra­cu­lously light and pleas­ant man­ner. Gra­ciously soar­ing pup­pets and many de­tails in this fam­ous sceno­graphy by Günther Schneider-Siemssen with cos­tumes by Mar­ie-Lu­ise Walek are well worth-see­ing. The cho­reo­graph­er is Le­onard Salaz, the dir­ect­or is Klaus Gmein­er. The mu­sic comes from a re­cord­ing by DECCA Lon­don with the Or­chestre de la Suisse Ro­mande, con­duc­ted by Ernst An­ser­met.

Hansel and Gretel
En­gel­bert Hump­erdinck com­posed one of the most beau­ti­ful fairy-tale op­er­as, which is still ac­claimed today, es­pe­cially be­fore Christ- mas. Melod­ies such as “Broth­er, come dance with me” have be­come pop­u­lar tunes. The mu­sic comes from the Im­boc­cal­lupo En­semble, con­duc­ted by An­dreas Schüller. The sing­ers are: An­nette Dasch, Christina Naude, Mar­tina Ham­berg-Möbi­us, Giedre Po­volai­tite, Bin Lee, Akiko Hoy­ashida, Eck­hard Glauche, Jörg Gott­schick. The fanci­fully pro­duc­tion of the Salzburg Ma­ri­on­ette Theatre by Hin­rich Hor­stkotte, who did the sta­ging and the sceno­graphy is full of amus­ingly al­lu­sions to Richard Wag­n­er. A must for young and old!