Comment on See the last great Christmas opera right here in Portland

In days of yore, when most musicians were employed either by the church or royalty, composers supplied music plentifully for holidays and feasts – an arrangement that yielded, over the centuries, an enormous body of Christmas works, many of which remain in the canon. Now that those institutions are largely out of the business of keeping composers busy, production has dwindled, and though composers continue to create Christmas works, the new ones seem to come and go, without making much of a mark. There was a moment, however, when it seemed that industry might pick up where the church and royalty left off.