(upbeat music) (upbeat music fades) - It's the 30th consecutive year that the U Opera and University of Utah School of Music has held its holiday performance, "Amahl and the Night Visitors."

Here with the details on what's new is Associate Director of Opera and Stage Director James Bobick.

Hi, James.

Welcome.

- Thank you.

Thank you for having me.

- Yeah, so tell me what you're doing.

You're doing something different with "Amahl."

It's not just "Amahl and the Night Visitors."

- Not this year.

So this year, we're doing "Amahl and the Night Visitors" as the first half of the show, written by Menotti in 1951 for television actually, and then after intermission, it's an amazing smorgasbord of pieces.

We have Holst's "Christmas Day," Finzi's "In Terra Pax," which is a symphonic telling of the Christmas story, and then we finish it with four arias from "Messiah" and a Hallelujah Chorus Sing-Along.

- Wow.

(laughs) You've got a lot going on, and you're doing all of them, so talk a little more about the three new ones.

- So the three new ones, you can think about it as being these composers' view of the holiday season.

So Holst calls "Christmas Day," "a fantasy on old carols," so they're all carols that you recognize.

And we are going to fully stage it with dancers from the School of Dance at the University of Utah and a quartet of singers to tell these holiday stories from his perspective.

We then move into Finzi's "In Terra Pax" and it is the story of a man walking on the English countryside in the snow and how he sees the winter.

And then finally, we all know "Messiah," and these are four of the most famous arias from the Christmas section.

- Which is so great.

I mean, what a way to celebrate the holidays.

And I love that you're bringing in dancers and of course, the U Opera is involved and the whole School of Music.

So you've got lots of talent up there.

- A lot of talent, and everyone performing are all current students at the U.

And then the orchestra, like all the years before, is the Salt Lake Symphony.

- Wonderful.

Well, looking forward to that.

And thank you so much for being here.

- Thank you for your time.

- And if you'd like to know more about that upcoming production of U Opera and the University of Utah School of Music, "Amahl and the Night Visitors" and the other three pieces, it's December 5th through 7th at 7:30 and December 7th at 2:00 It's all at The Grand Theatre.

Go to music.utah.edu, music.utah.edu.

I'm Mary Dickson.

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