A NATURAL CHRISTMAS PAIRING

Dickens and Baranski make for a fantastic festive treat

- ELISABETH VINCENTELLI

Christine Baranski could not actually get her mitts on the small book, but she got a charge from being just centimetres away. She was at the Morgan Library and Museum in New York City, getting a close look at Charles Dickens’ original manuscript for A Christmas Carol.

“You should warn people,’ she said jokingly, “there’s an electric shock”

She now has an intimate connection to A Christmas Carol through her collaboration with the Skylark Vocal Ensemble. On a recent recording with the group, she reads the text, and the members sing, well, carols; they will perform a live version at the Morgan on Dec 18 as well as at the Breakers mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, the following day.

Skylark has been experimenting with narrative forms for the past decade.

“We're trying to bring stories into programmes, to give choral music a new context,” said Matthew Guard, the ensemble’s artistic director. A programme in 2020, for example, featured two classic fairy tales, The Little Mermaid and Snow White. When he and composer Benedict Sheehan decided to do a sequel of sorts to that project, an obvious theme quickly emerged.

“Choral music is never more interesting and powerful than at Christmastime for many people,’ Guard said. “So it was like, ‘We need a Christmas story.” And of course few are more popular than Dickens’ tale of the redemption of the coldhearted miser Ebenezer Scrooge.

Guard edited the story's text from 30,000 words down to about 5,000, then he and Sheehan picked carols, and Sheehan worked on the arrangements and underscoring.