For decades, the historical facts of the 1914 Christmas truce during World War I have provided solace and encouragement in times of hostilities and division. And here we are again in such an era.
Opera Orlando, then, has a timely gift for patrons—an extended season of peace and hope with its production of Silent Night, the complete Pulitzer-Prize winning opera that interprets the poignant event in song, music and grand emotion.
The ambitious two-hour production will feature a multilingual cast of more than 40—including a dozen principals and a chorus of 24—and the power of the full Orlando Philharmonic Orchestra. Two performances are scheduled in Steinmetz Hall at Dr. Phillips Center: Friday, February 6, at 7:30 p.m., and Sunday, February 8, at 2 p.m.
The opera, premiered by Minnesota Opera in 2011, is based on the 2005 Academy Award-nominated film Joyeux Noël, which was in turn based on widespread truces that broke out along the Western Front in the early months of the Great War. Such ceasefires, frowned on by military leaders, have not been replicated in subsequent wars.
In the fictionalized film account, leaders of three regiments—Scottish, French and German—decide on a cease fire for Christmas Eve. For a day, in the no-man’s-land between trenches, the beleaguered soldiers shared songs, food and football and reverently buried their dead.
“It drives home the fact that once you get to know your enemy, you no longer have the desire to fight them,” says Gabriel Preisser, general director of Opera Orlando, who’ll also perform in the production. Gabriel’s older brother, Grant, the company’s artistic director, is the stage director and scenic designer for this all-new interpretation of Silent Night.
Characters in the film and the opera whose lives are disrupted forever by the war include an opera singer from Germany and his fiancé from Denmark (also an opera singer), as well as a pair of brothers from Scotland and a lieutenant from France who must leave his pregnant wife for the battlefield.
The opera is particularly close to Gabriel’s heart because he sang a principal role in the original production. Then, following its success in Minnesota, Silent Night was staged by other companies where Gabriel, a baritone, was invited to reprise his role as a guest artist. “That launched my career,” he says.
Gabriel sang the role of Lieutenant Gordon, from Scotland, in the premiere. In the upcoming production he’ll sing the role of Lieutenant Audebert, from France. Another Central Floridian, soprano Julia Radosz—a native of Slovakia—will sing the role of Anna Sørensen, lover of Soldat (Private) Nikolaus Sprink, a German tenor, which will be sung by Brendan J. Boyle, originally from Topeka, Kansas.
Silent Night stands out as composer Kevin Puts’s first opera and the one for which he was awarded the Pulitzer Prize in 2012. The libretto is by the prolific Mark Campbell (who was also the librettist for Opera Orlando’s first commissioned new work, The Secret River).
The opera is challenging to stage, says Grant, because it is “more cinematic than a typical opera.” He pulls the whole together—bunkers and trenches, fighting and dying, communing and playing—with a focus on no-man’s-land, where for a brief time, both combat and kinship were possible.
Scene, character and mood changes are accomplished by video projection and architectural fragments dramatically flying in and out. Says Grant: “We let the land tell the story as things unfold on top of it.”
Opera Orlando has, in recent years—including in three different locations last December—produced a one-hour version of the opera called All is Calm: The Christmas Truce of 1914. It features nine performers singing a cappella. But from Gabriel’s point of view, the 1914 truce is a story that can’t be told too many ways or too many times.
“We just miss the mark as humans sometimes and this story helps us think about those hard questions,” he says. “What would I have done? Where would I have been that night?”
Grant, who has been the producer of All is Calm, believes that Silent Night will reward patrons with a production that amplifies the passion of the much shorter, simpler version that has been previously staged.
“To be able to tell the story on a very epic level in an incredible venue with an incredible orchestra, I think it is just going to be something very special,” says Grant. “And probably it will be emotionally overwhelming for everyone.”
Dr. Phillips Center is located at 445 South Magnolia Avenue, Orlando. For more information, call 844.513.2014 or visit drphillipscenter.org.
Opera Orlando General Director Gabriel Preisser will perform, while Artistic Director Grant Preisser directed and designed the elaborate production. | Courtesy Opera Orlando
