This December, the Royal Opera House will be welcoming NHS key workers and their families to its 2021 Paul Hamlyn Christmas Treat: a morning of interactive workshops and activities followed by a gala performance of The Nutcracker.
The event, scheduled for Saturday 4 December, will include Royal Ballet workshops, demonstrations by members of The Royal Ballet School, storytelling activities and presentations by the ROH Archive and Collections team, ending with the festive favourite from The Royal Ballet, performed that afternoon by Principal Lauren Cuthbertson as the Sugar Plum Fairy, First Soloist William Bracewell as her Prince, Soloist Isabella Gasparini as Clara, and First Soloist Luca Acri as Hans Peter (The Nutcracker).
The event is supported by The Helen Hamlyn Trust, in memory of the late Paul Hamlyn, and is designed specifically to introduce new audiences to the Royal Opera House.
This year’s event is part of the Royal Opera House’s wider #ThankYouNHS programme that commenced in June 2021 with Puccini’s La bohème, sung to an auditorium of specially invited staff from ROH’s nearest hospitals, and will end with a performance of Swan Lake in March 2022. So far this season, approximately 5,000 NHS key workers and their family members have taken up ticket offers, many visiting the ROH for the first time.