Whilst this was the first non-G&S show to be performed by the Society, much of the music will have been familiar to G&S devotees, as all of the songs, including one carol, were written by Sir Arthur Sullivan.
Towards the end of 2018 we had decided to put on a Christmas show in 2019, in place of our autumn and Christmas concerts, and looked at staging another Gilbert & Sullivan adaptation of A Christmas Carol. However, for various reasons, we did not believe it would be suitable for our Society and therefore decided to write our own version, which we entitled 'Sing A Song O' Scrooge'.
We agreed that we would stick fairly closely to the original story and did not want any of the songs to sound contrived; in other words we wanted the audience to believe that the music was written for the songs, as in the original operas, and not the other way around. Of course, with 13 operas of Sullivan's music and Gilbert's interesting metres, reflecting a range of moods, there was plenty of material to choose from in adapting this classic story written by one of our greatest wordsmiths.
The project was completed in less than a year, and in many ways rewriting the songs was the easy part! Inputting the music and then the company having to learn new words to songs they have been singing for years proved no easy challenge. Whilst writing the songs I kept asking myself whether Messrs Gilbert, Sullivan and DIckens would have approved of our efforts. Or course we'll never know I hope the audience did!
Nigel Hickman - Director
