Edmund Donlevy

Broadcast on 1 February 1956, composer Arthur Benjamin's Mañana was the first opera commissioned by the BBC. "The small Andalusian village comes to life in a sequence of short scenes introducing its inhabitants: a group of gossiping washerwomen, the prying eyes of the old rich widow looking down from her window, the neglected boy playing in the square, the pickpocket at work, the lazy man stretched out snoring in the midday sun, the Wise Man who mends china and writes letters for the poor and is fed in turn by the community. What will happen on the day when his food is given to a boy wrongly imprisoned in the local gaol and the Wise Man goes hungry? His anger is such that he prophesies the end of the world for mañana (tomorrow morning) and the credulous village repents and makes ready to meet its doom." —George R. Foa

Miser Ebenezer Scrooge is awakened on Christmas Eve by spirits who reveal to him his own miserable existence, what opportunities he wasted in his youth, his current cruelties, and the dire fate that awaits him if he does not change his ways. Scrooge is faced with his own story of growing bitterness and meanness, and must decide what his own future will hold: death or redemption.