Leader, Leonard Hirsch
Conducted by Clifton Helliwell
O
Pfitzner's Das Christelflein (The Christmas Elf) is a two-act opera in the vein that Humperdinck exploited so successfully-a Christmas fairy-tale full of wood-spirits, angels, and such stock figures of German legend as Knecht Ruphrecht. There is a human family in it as well, of course, a sick sister who is made well at the end, and a wicked brother who does not believe in God, but is finally converted through the agency of the Christ-Child.
Pfitzner (who was born in Moscow, of German parents, in 1869) enjoys a very high reputation in present-day Germany.