page_title: Christmas with Flicka
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: Christmas with Flicka / Synopsis
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut
context_page_description: Christmas with Flicka is a 58-minute television concert film starring Frederica von Stade, Melba Moore, Rex Smith and Julius Rudel. It is an American-Austrian co-production, shot on location in Austria in 1987.
context_section_description: Part concert, part travel documentary and with a tincture of comedy and fantasy, this 58-minute television movie follows the American operatic mezzo-soprano Frederica "Flicka" von Stade, the Broadway singers Rex Smith and Melba Moore and the classical conductor and pianist Julius Rudel through a four day Christmas holiday in St. Wolfgang im Salzkammergut, a village on the shores of the Wolfgangsee in the Salzburg region of the Austrian Alps. (The making of the film was inspired by Von Stade's memories of discovering the village one summer while accompanying her mother on a visit to the Salzburg Festival and imagining that a Christmas spent there would be delightful.)
  The movie begins with von Stade arriving at the village's quayside on the ferry-boat Österreich (with the Christmas melody "Listen All Ye People on Earth"). She is met by a small, rapt girl and a smaller, less rapt boy, who take her to the home that she will be sharing with them.
  The following morning, after helping the children to get dressed ("The First Noël"), von Stade leads them on a shopping trip to the local shops, visiting a greengrocer, a butcher, a delicatessen, a patisserie, a florist, a gift shop, a traditional Austrian clothes shop, a man who makes candles for Christmas wreaths and a man who carves wooden figures for Christmas crèches ("The Twelve Days of Christmas").
  Her purchases offloaded, she accompanies the children on an expedition up and down the misty Schafberg on the Schafbergbahn, a coal-fired rack railway ("Deck the Halls").
  In the evening, with the children safely tucked up in bed ("Little Jesus Sleeps"), she joins Moore, Smith and Rudel on a visit to an old-fashioned tavern for an evening of beer, romance and folk dancing with women in dirndl costumes and thigh-slapping men in lederhosen (folk dance, "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen"). Rex Smith entertains the company with a song ("Greensleeves"). On the way home, von Stade and her friends encounter three mysterious, kingly horsemen who seem like a vision of the Magi ("À Bethlehem, quand L'Enfant-Dieu").
  The next day, Christmas Eve, begins with von Stade going with the children to the town square where brass players high in the tower of the local church have summoned them ("Est ist ein Ros' Entsprungen") for some folk dancing ("Joy to the World").
  In the evening, she gives a  song recital with Moore and Rudel ("Les Bergers", "Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow") and meets the village's soprano choir ("O Dieu, O Dieu"). Once back home with her hosts, von Stade and Rudel tell the children how people came to celebrate Christmas with conifer trees ("O Tannenbaum", "O Little Town of Bethlehem"). Then, explaining the history of Santa Claus on the way, she walks with them and the rest of the villagers in a candlelit procession to church ("Chansons Tous le Plus Haut") for Midnight Mass ("He Shall Feed His Flock", "Alleluia"), before she takes them home again and puts them to bed with a lullaby ("Silent Night").
  A concluding Christmas morning sequence recapitulates the highlights of the film (reprise of "The Twelve Days of Christmas") and offers up several humorous outtakes before the credits roll (reprise of "Alleluia").
caption: St Wolfgang, photographed from the Wolfgangzee by Dmitry A. Mottl
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