Christmas is approaching fast. A reason to venture into musical highs and lows. At the NO, however, we’re not focusing on the birth of a baby, but rather on the deaths of three pop icons who all passed away ten years ago: Prince, George Michael and David Bowie. Three exceptional artists, three evenings, three tributes – led by musicians LEGION SEVEN, Sarah Taylor Ellis, Mara Snip and Niko Meinhold. Christmas music for everyone who loves the holiday hustle and bustle … or hates it.
Together with string players from the Naked String Quartet, Sarah Taylor Ellis and music performer Mara Snip (1000 AIRPLANES ON THE ROOF) dive into the album Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1 and spooky, schmaltzy superhits like “Careless Whisper”. And right at the heart of it all, a songwriter who was far more sophisticated and political than the Christmas playlist would have you believe. A pop star who died on the very day his most famous song is played everywhere: Dark Christmas, I gave you my heart!
WITH Mara Snip, Sarah Taylor Ellis and the Naked String Quartet
Team
Sarah Taylor Ellis
“Frozen meets Kurt Weill” (Nachtkritik).
Whether collaborating on a musical for an inclusive theatre company in Berlin or composing an anthem for a women’s choir marching through New York, composer and conductor Sarah Taylor Ellis seeks to embrace the inherent hybridity and diversity of music theatre as an art form.
In the 2025/26 season, Sarah served as musical director for Philip Glass’s 1000 AIRPLANES ON THE ROOF at Neuköllner Oper, composed the music for Miranda July’s All Fours at Sophiensæle, and premiered her indie-folk musical Die Mitte der Welt at Landestheater Linz. Sarah is a regular collaborator with the music theatre collective glanz&krawall. Following a critically acclaimed, sold-out premiere in 2024, her bureaucracy musical Die Tüten aus der Verwaltung, created with Theater Thikwa, played at the 2025 Politik im Freien Theater festival and returned to Thikwa in November 2025 and March 2026.
Sarah’s hybrid opera-musical Die Troerinnen received an OPERA America Discovery Grant, and she was awarded the Goldene Feder for her outstanding teaching and mentorship of students in music theatre studies at the University of Bayreuth. She holds a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance Studies from UCLA and a B.A. in Theatre Studies, Music and English from Duke University, and holds dual German and US citizenship.
Mara Snip
Mara (she/they, 1991) is theatre performer, actress and writer in The Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. In 2013 she graduated at the Codarts conservatory in Rotterdam with a bachelor of music in music theatre and is since 2020 based in Berlin.
Her work is described as drama-electronic, documental music theatre. She writes from her personal trans-experience and shares this through creating musical landscapes in which she uses her voice, loopstation and synthesizer. In contrary to hostile public spaces towards trans people, the theatre allows Mara to invite the audience to exist on her terms and queer vision. Her hope is for the audience to live that queer future back in daily life.
Mara considers her transition the ultimate form of self-expression and lets it be her compass for a connected, creative and authentic life. Every day is a renewed, deepened relationship with her developing body and invites fresh and compassionate ways of existing. Transitioning brought her an extraordinary force of autonomy and drives her to reclaim space for the visibility and rights of queerness within our suppressed, dysfunctional society.
In the past years she created two solo-performances, collaborates with Boogaerdt & Van der Schoot, starred in Gloriette by Leila Hekmat at HAU, and co-directed and performed 1000 AIRPLANES ON THE ROOF from Philip Glass at the Neuköllner Oper.
Presented by 
