Coro Nuovo promise a fully-costumed Very Victorian Christmas

Spokeswoman Kate Kent said: “It will be a celebration of music and carols which the Victorians enjoyed so much and actor Nick Long will be Charles Dickens doing some readings in between music. St Wilfrid’s is a Victorian church which came about after the railway arrived so that adds an extra highlight. We have a bit of interest from local history groups who plan to come in costume as well! Zoe Barnett , our current Sussex Young Musician, winner is performing and she is now researching some Victorian melodies to play during the concert. Simon Gray who has over 40 years both as a performer and director of musical theatre will be conducting.”

Tickets £12.50 in advance; £15 at the door; web coronuovo.org.uk/tickets; email [email protected]; phone 01444 717750.

“We were wanting to do a very different Christmas concert. We’re dressing up for a start! We're going to be in costume and we're going to be in this Victorian building. We've got some well-known carols that the Victorians enjoyed singing and all sorts of music from that era but we have also got Nick as a young Charles Dickens. He is going to be doing some Dickens readings which he is going to choose. He is doing all the research for that and he will also give little snippets of Victorian life at Christmas to which we will be responding with music. He will talk about Prince Albert and the Christmas tree and we will sing O Tannenbaum. He will talk about what they ate at Christmas and we will do carols based around food and it will be lovely to have Zoe back. It is sometimes quite difficult to get opportunities to give platforms to young musicians and really we only have two opportunities in a year so it is lovely to have her back now and she is really keen to take part.

“So the whole thing is going to be a really fun and immersive experience. The last time we sang together was for our jubilee concert in July. Since then we’ve done little things. We had a workshop at the beginning of October that brought us together and we did a memorial service. We have done little bits of fundraising in between. There was a G&S that some people did but generally we jump from summer to December and we are looking forward to this. Audiences are still tough. It is the economic situation as well as Covid. I think people are thinking more about how they want to spend their money and that's another reason why we wanted to do something that was really good fun. In the interval we have made Queen Victoria's Christmas cake using the original recipe so the show will be something for all the senses. People will be able to taste as well!”