Is this a film about Ebenezer Scrooge? About a composer’s life? An opera within an opera? The Passion of Scrooge blurs these lines between performance, documentary, and fiction, into a cinematic concert experience that’s seasoned with magical reality. Composer Jon Deak has adapted Charles Dickens’ timeless tale into a contemporary opera that melts the heart but doesn’t avoid the darkness in Scrooge that’s still resonant with the material concerns of our time. Using neither period costumes, nor set pieces to reconstruct old England, the film invites audiences to experience Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol with the imaginative possibilities of a radio play. And then, to meet those visions in your head, filmmaker H. Paul Moon‘s floating camera intimately captures musicians performing the score as characters themselves, led by baritone William Sharp, in this ageless haunted redemption story about “us, everyone.”

The Passion of Scrooge streams through Sunday, January 8, 2023, and is available for viewing with an Opera Philadelphia Channel subscription for $9.99 per month or $99 per year. Visit operaphila.tv to start streaming this and other programs such as David T. Little’s Black Lodge, Poulenc’s La voix humaine starring Patricia Racette, Rene Orth’s K-Pop-infused short TakTakShoo, and Tyshawn Sorey’s Cycles of My Being starring tenor Lawrence Brownlee.