Go to the Ballet
The acclaimed Boston Ballet artistic director Mikko Nissinen’s production of The Nutcracker is a must for the holiday. Working alongside costume and set designer Robert Perdziola, this production of The Nutcracker received rave reviews.
Did you know: The production takes a huge amount of preparation each season. There are 72 artists from Boston Ballet working closely with 99 chosen students from Boston Ballet School, who have been selected to appear in the ballet. Up to 182 costumes appear during a single performance, with 350 individual ones having been made for different casts. Over 200,000 jewels were used to embroider the costumes, including the sparkly bodices on the lead dancers. The Christmas tree grows from a none-too-short 16 feet to 43 feet during the battle scene.
Boston Opera House
Ballet Runs through December 31
bostonoperahouse.tickets
Visit the Cape Ann Museum
Fitz Henry Lane (a.k.a. Fitz Hugh Lane) secured his place in American art as a marine painter of high regard. Yet before he became a fully-fledged painter, he was a highly skilled printmaker, and it’s this foundational aspect of his biography that is the focus of “Drawn from Nature & On Stone,” at the Cape Anne Museum in Gloucester. The exhibit consists of 59 artworks. Guest curator, Georgia Barnhill.
Tuesday through Saturday, 10:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
Sunday, 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
The Museum is closed on Mondays and on New Year’s Day, and Christmas. (On December 24 and December 31 the Museum closes at 1:00 p.m.)
capeannmuseum.org
Tour Castle Hill on the Crane Estate
Centuries before becoming a grand summer estate owned by one of America’s wealthiest families, Castle Hill was well known by Native Americans, who called the area Agawam, referring to its rich fishery. For more than two centuries, a succession of owners farmed the land. Beginning in the 1880s, Richard T. Crane, Jr.’s purchased of the property in 1910, and Castle Hill came to exemplify the American Country Place Era with its farm and estate buildings, designed grounds and gardens, and diverse natural areas. The Cranes hired some of the century’s most notable architects and landscape architects. The first house built atop Castle Hill, an Italian Renaissance Revival villa designed by Shepley, Rutan and Coolidge, was razed and replaced in 1928 with the 59-room Stuart-style mansion designed by architect David Adler you see today. The Great House is furnished with period antiques.
December 26 to 29, 10 to 4p.m. (last tour at 3 p.m.)
Skate at MarketStreet
The MarketStreet Rink presented by Lahey Health, is open for the fifth year in a row, enhancing MarketStreet Lynnfield’s entertainment, shopping, and dining experience all winter long. Weather permitting, the MarketStreet Rink is open through the winter. The MarketStreet Rink is a classic 58 by 105 foot skating rink accented by a beautiful array of illuminated snowflake lights. It is situated on The Green, home to MarketStreet Lynnfield’s community events, performances, and gatherings. A 200-ton refrigeration unit ensures optimal ice temperature, even in warmer temperatures.
View Works by Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe: Art, Image, Style at the Peabody Essex Museum offers art lovers to move beyond her instantly recognizable paintings of giant sensual desert flowers to learn about this iconic artist’s personal preferences. Examining her lifestyle and the material culture she left behind. Museum-goers are invited to peruse the intimate corners of her closet. In fact, that’s exactly what guest curator Wanda M. Corn did. A retired professor from Stanford University, the esteemed American art scholar spent more than 20 years creating this exhibition that premiered at the Brooklyn Museum last spring.
Now through April 1, 2018
Hike a North Shore Trail
As Essex County’s Land Trust, Greenbelt works with landowners and the 34 cities and towns of Essex County to conserve open space, farmland, wildlife habitat, and scenic landscapes. The organization works to help protect native plants, animals, maintain clean water, and create free and accessible places for outdoor recreation and the enjoyment of nature. Take a trip to the Carter Reservation, which shares a remarkable natural and human history with the city-owned Dogtown Common. You’ll discover enormous glacial erratics within a mixed hardwood forest.