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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

The Nutcracker and the Mouse King

December 6, 2019
19 Killermont St, Glasgow G2 3NX, United Kingdom

Classical concerts don’t come more charming than this one. At Usher Hall, John Mauceri conducts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra in excerpts from two ballets—Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty and Prokofiev’s Cinderella. After the intermission, the actor with the impish grin, Alan Cumming, takes the stage to narrate Mauceri’s concert adaptation of The Nutcracker and the Mouse King. To Tchaikovsky’s beloved music, Cumming will speak the words of E. T. A. Hoffmann, the German Romantic writer who invented the 1816 story upon which the ballet is based. —L.J.