Hans Abrahamsen and Henrik Engelbrecht developed the opera libretto for The Snow Queen from this while largely retaining the language characteristics of the fairytale.

Gerda tells him how the devil created a magic mirror which makes everything beautiful look ugly and that it has broken into a million tiny pieces.

Gerda has begun the search for Kay and finds herself in the Old Woman's garden where the flowers sing her the song of the three dead sisters.

The reindeer tells the Finn Woman of how Gerda was held captive by the robbers and about the assumption that Kay is with the Snow Queen.

Arriving in the Snow Queen's kingdom, the reindeer bids farewell to Gerda, kissing her on the mouth and weeping.

Meanwhile, in the Snow Queen's ice palace, Kay is confronted with the task of finding the perfect word but he is almost petrified with cold and despair.

The Snow Queen is scored for:[3] Abrahamsen had already made his first compositional attempts to write a vocal work in the 1970s.

Then I wanted to add the text with the singing voice, like a painter inserts his figures into the background landscape.

Abrahamsen associated its episodic form with his work Märchenbilder, which, based on Robert Schumann's chamber music piece for viola and piano, deals with the idea of assembling stories from pictures.

Inspired by the collaboration with the soprano Barbara Hannigan for the composition let me tell you, the desire grew to create an opera part for her voice.

A commission from the Royal Danish Opera in Copenhagen enabled Hans Abrahamsen to find time for the compositional process.

The English version of The Snow Queen was written for a production with Barbara Hannigan at the Bavarian State Opera in collaboration with the British writer Amanda Holden.

[5] The first performance of the English version took place on 21 December 2019 at the Bavarian State Opera under the musical direction of Cornelius Meister.

First impressions of the resulting opera were gained from the Drei Märchenbilder, based on the orchestral part of the first act of The Snow Queen, which was performed at the 1st Academy Concert of the Bavarian State Orchestra under the musical direction of Constantinos Carydis in October 2018.