The holidays will look, feel and sound different this year. There will be no “Magic of Christmas” singalongs in the seats at Merrill Auditorium and no packed houses of excited kids to marvel at the elegant, athletic dancers in “The Nutcracker.”

But those holiday traditions and many others will continue, adapted for the pandemic. With the exception of two productions of “A Christmas Carol” – one at Portland Stage, the other at Footlights Theater in Falmouth – Greater Portland’s big traditional holiday shows will happen without audiences this year. They will be recorded and offered up with a fresh bow, so people can watch from the comforts of home. With that in mind, here’s our list of holiday arts events not to miss.

Portland Symphony Orchestra’s ‘The Magic of Christmas at Home’

With every crisis is a silver lining, says Eckart Preu, music director and conductor for the Portland Symphony Orchestra. For the PSO, the silver lining is the opportunity to create a high-quality, professionally recorded TV special that people can enjoy from the comforts of home. Preu and musicians from the Portland Symphony Orchestra recorded this year’s “Magic of Christmas” in an empty Merrill Auditorium in mid-November, and the PSO will make the concert available in a digital format on its PortlandSymphonyTV.com video platform for all ticket-holders starting Dec. 1. It’s available through Dec. 31, and tickets start at $10.

The hope is that people will gather around the TV and enjoy “Magic” from the safety of home, Preu said.

“‘We call it ‘The Magic of Christmas at Home’ because we will all be at home, but we saw this as an opportunity to do something magical so that Portland can still celebrate Christmas together,” he said. “This is a way to support your arts community, and also do something for yourself at home to get into the Christmas spirit and the community spirit and celebrate together even though we are not together. There is such a need for social community – we need each other. We want this to be a catalyst for celebrating together.”

The digital version of the concert will feel similar to past “Magic” concerts, with festive takes on “Sleigh Ride,” selections from Tchaikovsky’s “The Nutcracker” and a singalong of Christmas songs – with families singing together at home. But it will also be very different, because of the potential of digital media.

“There are certain things you can do on TV that you cannot do in a concert hall, and that is what we are trying to explore and exploit, those intimate moments the screen can provide — the close-ups, the facial expressions that you might not see from your seat in the hall,” the conductor said. “What people will enjoy is that it will feel more like a TV show and that you are really right in the middle of it.”

Recording the concert was a complex, layered process. The PSO is allowed a total of 25 people on stage at Merrill, including Preu, the musicians and a small team of audio and video technicians. There are also many musical guests, including soprano Alyson Cambridge, organist James Kennerley, dancers from Portland Ballet and singers from the Magic of Christmas Chorus and the Pihcintu Multicultural Chorus.

The ensembles separately recorded their parts, which were then edited in the post-production process. The 72 members of the Magic of Christmas each recorded their parts at home alone, then sent their individual audio files to the sound team, which assembled all 72 files into one. That audio file of the chorus played in Preu’s ear as he conducted the musicians on stage.

“It was a huge challenge for everyone, but the chorus is such an important part of the identity of ‘Magic,’ I am glad it worked out,” Preu said.

Similarly, for “Sleigh Ride,” an upbeat song near the end of the program and an audience favorite, musicians recorded by section – wind players at one time, strings at another, and so on. That enabled the orchestra to expand the sound of the production and employ more musicians. After the orchestra recorded “The Waltz of the Snowflakes” from “The Nutcracker” by Tchaikovsky, it sent the audio file to the dancers at Portland Ballet, which used the music when its dancers recorded their parts.

Cambridge has performed on Broadway and sung with leading opera companies in this country and overseas, including the Metropolitan Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago and Washington National Opera. She has had one gig since March, and praised the PSO for attempting something as ambitious as the “Magic of Christmas at Home” program.

“I applaud them for still producing a great holiday concert in spite all of this,” she said in a phone interview from New York, after she completing filming in Portland. “There are so many orchestras, opera companies and theater companies that have thrown up their hands and said, ‘Too bad,’ and were not able to make the adjustment and still bring music and performance into people’s homes. I applaud the symphony for doing it. I love that they said, ‘No, the pandemic is not going to get us down. We are going to do this and do it at the highest caliber – and safely.’ I am very impressed.”

The musical program will sound familiar, with some new elements. The PSO commissioned John Wineglass, who composes music for TV, to write a piece called “The Toy Factory,” which features wind musicians. The concert will open with “Christmas Overture” by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, a late 19th and early 2oth century composer from England whose music was popular with African Americans.

“We knew we wanted to find a way to make the holiday as special as possible for our community amidst the challenges of this year,” PSO Executive Director Carolyn Nishon said in a press release. “We hope that this season, the ‘Magic of Christmas at Home’ will bring families and friends together safely to enjoy a Maine holiday tradition.”

For details and viewing options, visit portlandsymphony.org or call PortTIX at (207) 842-0800.

Portland Stage, ‘A Christmas Carol’

We can all mostly agree that 2020 has been a lousy year, right? More than ever, we need love and hope and maybe even redemption. Portland Stage offers all of that in a one-actor version of Charles Dickens’ tale of one man’s greed and his haunting path of conversion into a kind, generous and caring human being. This year, more than ever, may we all bask in the light of goodwill that he found.

Portland Stage will present the literary classic Dec. 2-24, with an audience of no more than 50 people. It also will record a video of the play and offer it for streaming so people can watch from home. The streaming version of “A Christmas Carol” will be available about a week after it opens, through New Year’s.

Joel Leffert, a stage, film and TV actor from Kingston, New York, will star in the show that he adapted from the original. Leffert has appeared as Scrooge in the Portland Stage version of “A Christmas Carol” for the past two years. In his one-actor role, he will present an abridged version of the play, keeping intact Dickens’ words and language but trimming the script down to about an hour.

This will be the second play that Portland Stage has presented during the pandemic. The first, “Talley’s Folly,” closed last week. Portland Stage will employ the same production team members for “A Christmas Carol” as it did for “Talley’s Folly,” because they are familiar with pandemic protocols, said Anita Stewart, the theater’s executive and artistic director.

She worked with the Actors’ Equity Association for permission to stage the play with stringent pandemic safety protocols. As was the case with “Talley’s Folly,” it wasn’t easy to secure the union’s blessing, she said. “We can’t do a bubble like the NBA, but they want to stipulate as much of that as they can,” she said. Among other safety precautions, Portland Stage must house Leffert in a building with 24-hour, in-person security to limit the actor’s contact with the outside world.

“It’s been a challenging thing. I know they are doing it to keep everybody safe, and we want that too, of course. But it’s an exhausting process. It’s hard putting a lot of energy into something where you do not know what the outcome will be in terms of whether you can do the show or not. When we got the final go-ahead from Equity to do rehearsals and move forward with a live audience coming in, it was a great relief,” Stewart said.

Typically, Portland Stage would host school groups from across Maine to see the play. This year, the theater company will make the video available to schools and Leffert will do Zoom Q&As with students afterward. “Instead of students in Presque Isle hopping on a bus and driving 4.5 hours, this provides another opportunity to engage with young people across the state with more efficiency. Nothing will replace being in a theater and seeing actors actually do the work they are doing in the space, but this is a great option for people who are not in a position to come to theater in person, for whatever reason,” she said.

For details, tickets and viewing options, visit portlandstage.org.

The Footlights Theatre, ‘A Christmas Carol’

Another local theater is putting on a one-man show of “A Christmas Carol,” but taking a different approach. Instead of telling the story from the perspective of one character, The Footlight Theatre’s Michael J. Tobin will play 30-some different roles.

The Falmouth theater’s live production of “A Christmas Carol” opens Dec. 1. The show is an adaptation Tobin wrote in the early 1990s, and he has toured with it as a one-man show, so this won’t be his first time playing all the roles from Scrooge to Tiny Tim. He doesn’t change costumes, but his voice and his physicality will let the audience know each time a different character appears.

“As an actor, it’s one of the most challenging things you can do. I can’t get caught up in which voice I’m doing, I just have to live it,” said Tobin.

Special effects will be a big part of the live show, with lights and other technical equipment helping to create illusions and visions of ghosts. Tobin said the production is less “sugary” than some performances of “A Christmas Carol” and more true to the ghost story elements of the original Charles Dickens story.

The show will be performed for a maximum of 25 people, in a theater that usually holds 75. All the chairs have been removed and are reconfigured for every show, so that groups can be spaced. The audience is required to wear masks and no concessions are sold. Tobin is also offering people a chance to buy out all 25 seats for a private performance – maybe for just a couple or a family – for $500. So far he’s sold five of those private shows. He said he’s also recently had a “medical-grade” air-purifying system installed.

The 80-minute show runs Dec. 1-23, at 7 p.m. Tuesdays through Thursdays, 7:30 p.m. on Fridays and 2 p.m. on Saturdays and Sundays. Tickets are $20. The theater also hired a production company to film a version of the show without an audience, which will stream online beginning Dec. 14, also for $20.

For more information and reservations, go to The Footlights Theatre website or call (207) 747-5434.

Maine State Ballet, ‘The Nutcracker Behind the Mask: A Short Movie’

When life throws you a change-up, you adjust. That’s the idea behind the new movie version of Maine State Ballet’s “The Nutcracker.” Instead of a live ballet at Merrill, the company presents a 40-minute movie version of the spectacle, “The Nutcracker Behind the Mask: A Short Movie,” available on demand for free from Nov. 27 to Dec. 12.

Glenn Davis, Maine State’s school director, said the movie is a gift to the community.

“We’ve never made a movie before, but this seemed like the year to try,” he said. “As artists, we all overcome obstacles to create something new, and that is what this is about. We wanted to continue the tradition, so we looked for a new way to tell the story. We’re cutting some music and shortening some scenes. It will be robust and quick. … Our mission is to uplift the community through dance. That is our purpose, to build morale and help people get through this pandemic.”

The movie is a narrated version of “The Nutcracker” with about 75 dancers, all of whom will be wearing masks designed by the company’s longtime associate director Gail Csoboth. The masks are integral to the performance. “As soon as we said we were going to do this, Gail’s creative juices started flowing and she began making these beautiful mask designs for us,” Davis said.

“The Nutcracker Behind the Mask” will tell the story of the Clara and her visit to the land of the Sugar Plum Fairy, with appearances by Uncle Drosselmeyer, the Nutcracker Prince and the Sugar Plum Fairy. The cast includes Elizabeth Chadbourne, who will dance the role of Clara for the first time, Arie Eiten as the Nutcracker Prince, Rhiannon Pelletier as the Sugar Plum Fairy and Jonathan Miele as the uncle, with choreography by the company’s artistic director, Linda MacArthur Miele, a former New York City Ballet dancer.

For details and viewing options, visit mainestateballet.org.

Portland Ballet, ‘A Victorian Nutcracker’

Portland Ballet will perform “A Victorian Nutcracker” for audiences all over Maine this year by using a time-honored tradition – the holiday TV special.

The ballet company is teaming up with the News Center Maine TV stations to air a filmed version of its annual holiday event on Dec. 12. The two-hour performance will air at 9 a.m. and again at 8 p.m. on WCSH, Channel 6 in Portland and WLBZ, Channel 2 in Bangor.

The production was filmed this fall mostly at the Westbrook Performing Arts Center by a Boston film company that specializes in ballet, said Milena Hartog, a dancer in the company and assistant to director Nell Shipman. It was filmed with a smaller cast than usually performs the live version each year, and with socially-distanced choreography, Hartog said.

So in scenes where people usually might be standing close together or touching, only family members or people who quarantined together are used. In the scene where a half dozen or so small children come out from under the skirt of Mother Ginger, only one comes out from under the skirt and two others run out from off stage.

The number of professional dancers from the ballet company is about the same as usual, 11. But the number of children and teens in the show is down to about 35, less than half the usual number. A smaller cast allowed for more social distancing while performing, Hartog said. Roles for young people were open to students of the Portland Ballet’s school. To limit contact, groups of dancers and actors rehearsed just their scenes; there were no rehearsals of the entire ballet.

One advantage of filming the ballet this year was that Portland’s ornate Victoria Mansion was used as a location. The National Historic Landmark, built between 1858 and 1860, is the inspiration for Portland Ballet’s annual “A Victorian Nutcracker.”

“We wanted to keep people engaged, to give our dancers and students something to look forward to,” said Hartog. “So many traditions have been put on hold this year. We thought this was a way to keep this one going.”

News Center Maine also wanted to help keep the tradition of “A Victorian Nutcracker” alive and give more visibility to Portland Ballet’s dancers, said Micah Malloy, director of sales for the company. Besides airing on the two TV stations, “A Victorian Nutcracker” will also be simulcast on the News Center Maine website and app and the News Center Maine Roku app, Malloy said.

For more information, go to portlandballet.org or newscentermaine.com.

Kotzschmar Organ, ‘Christmas with Kennerley: Home for the Holidays’

At some point this time of year, we usually find ourselves at an event, singing along with a Christmas carol or holiday tune. We know all the words, and we just can’t help ourselves. We’ll all still get the chance to do that this year, but from out own homes.

One opportunity will be “Christmas with Kennerley: Home for the Holidays,” a filmed version of the annual holiday concert by Portland’s municipal organist, James Kennerley, playing the Kotzschmar Organ.

Just like always, the finale of the organ concert will be a Christmas carol singalong. The performance was filmed in October at Merrill Auditorium. Besides Kennerley, performers filmed for the show include Maine husband and wife singers Jonathan Boyd (tenor) and Malinda Haslett (soprano), plus the Pine Tree Academy Bell Choir, dancers from Maine State Ballet and trumpeter Joseph Foley.

Boyd and Haslett will sing a new duet arrangement of “O Holy Night,” Bach’s “Ave Maria” and the pop holiday favorite “Baby, It’s Cold Outside.” Other music will include “Sleigh Ride” and a piece by contemporary composer Adolphus Hailstork.

“Despite the challenges faced by performing arts organizations across the world, we just knew that Christmas with Kennerley had to happen this year,” Kennerley said in an email.

The concert will be available online Dec. 12-28 and can be purchased through porttix.com, with “pay what you choose” prices starting at $10. For more information, go to the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ website.

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