Washington National Opera: Silent Night

It took seven years for Kevin Puts' award-winning opera Silent Night to reach the nation's capital, but the timing could not be better. We just saw our president arrive in Paris to "celebrate the end of World War One"and subsequently heard he could not make it to the Aisne-Marne American cemetery outside Paris, to honor about 2,200 U.S. war dead who are laid to rest there. We saw world leaders and dignitaries attending various remembrance events and finally gathering in the French capital to commemorate the centenary of the armistice signed to end the four-year war. The big anniversary is likely to entice some people to review some of the basic historic facts of the world's deadliest war. Those planning to see Silent Night should be among them.

German, French and Scottish regiments  pray together on Christmas Eve.

If someone had told me I would get a lump in my throat and tear up during a performance of a contemporary opera, I probably would have nodded to avoid offending the interlocutor and privately dismiss the idea. But that's exactly how I felt in Silent Night's crucial moment, when one soldier steps out of his shelter into a minefield, waving a Christmas tree and calling for one night of peace. The first reactions from the enemy lines - fear, bewilderment and suspicion - soon give way to acceptance, resulting more from general exhaustion than any religious feeling or revolutionary anti-war stance.

Based on the 2005 movie Joyeux Noël, which in turn is inspired by a true event, the opera centers on one day in the lives of a French, Scottish and German contingent, entrenched at a WWI battlefield in Belgium. In reality, German Crown Prince Wilhelm sent tenor Walter Kirchhoff to sing for German soldiers during the first Christmas season of the war, in December of 1914. His singing could be heard by French soldiers in nearby trenches who stood up and applauded his performance. And the rest is history.

In the fictionalized version, the visiting singer is a soprano who joins her tenor on the battlefield.

In the opera, the tenor is soldier Nikolaus Sprink (Alexander McKissick) and he is summoned from the front to sing at the crown prince's Christmas party.  This was arranged at the request of Sprink's fiancée, Swedish soprano Anna Sørensen (Raquel González).  She also finagles an official permission to return to the frontline with her soldier for one night. 

In the first act, we get a glimpse into the lives of main characters as they get news of the war. French Lieutenant Audebert (Michael Adams) is saying good-bye to his pregnant wife Madeleine (Hannah Hagerty), Scottish brothers Jonathan and William Dale and their local priest, Father Palmer, enlist as volunteers for what they believe will be a quickly won war. The music is a lively combination of waltz and variations on traditional tunes. The transition from peace to war is marked by powerful music score in which you can recognize sounds of cannon blasts, explosions, gun shots and screams.

The trenches in this production are lined up one above the other with Germans at the bottom, the French in the middle and Scots on top.  After a powerful and very cinematic battle scene, the soldiers in the trenches account for their dead and wounded, and reminisce about peaceful time at home. Jonathan is brokenhearted because his brother is killed and he was forced to leave him on the battlefield. He writes a letter to their mother pretending that both are still alive and swears he will revenge William. Audebert is longing for his wife, his aide-de-camp Ponchel silences his mother's alarm clock which goes off every morning to remind him of their morning coffee together. 

German Lieutenant Horstmayer is disdainful of Christmas gifts sent to his soldiers ("What next? Santa Clause?") and angers the singer who walks out into the mine field and shouts for a night of peace.  The soldiers from other trenches cautiously join him. At their urging, the German, French and Scottish commanders agree to permit a temporary truce. Father Palmer leads the soldiers into prayer and then they bury their dead, share their whiskey, wine, beer and chocolate and even play a game of soccer. 

French, German and Scottish lieutenants shake hands on the truce

This kind of story is always in danger of falling into the pitfall of sentimentality and cliché, and Silent Night is not completely devoid of them. What made me go maudlin was the opera's powerful reminder of what a wonderful world this would be if we all made just a little more effort to get out of our trenches and meet the other side. Silent Night carries a powerful anti-war message with barely a touch of blood or gore on the stage. Moments of humor are frequent, but they serve to make the underlying reality even more bleak. "This will be our most memorable Christmas," soldiers say. "It will be my only one," says Lt. Horstmayer, "I am Jewish." His pun suggests an expectation of an early end to the war. 

The angry generals back home won't reach the wisdom of their foot soldiers before they've sent millions of people to early graves and left millions of others maimed, orphaned and destitute.

As a punishment for the unsanctioned truce, one contingent receives the order to withdraw from the Belgian battlefield to the then quieter Verdun in northern France. In less than two years after the brief Christmas truce in Belgium, Verdun became the site of the longest and bloodiest battle of World War I. Mentioning it in the opera was a message that the worst is yet to come after a small reprieve.

This past week we have heard world leaders deliver touching eulogies and saw dignitaries lay wreathes at military cemeteries across the western world.  Silent Night offers an intimate encounter with the kind of people they are honoring.

Much of the cast portraying characters in their respective languages are talented young graduates of the Domingo-Cafritz program. Michael Adams as Lt. Audebert, Raquel González as Anna Sorensen, Norman Garrett as Lt. Gordon, and Aleksey Bogdanov as Lt. Horstmayer stood out for me.

Silent Night may not be modern enough or original enough for some tastes, but it is simply beautiful: the music, the story, the singing, and the production. At times wild, at times gentle and elegiac, or pensive, Puts's score is always hinting at the brevity of peace and goodwill on earth and at something sinister to follow. Librettist Mark Campbell uses generally light touches to expose the absurdity of war, with few exceptions, such as Johnathan's killing of an allied soldier by mistake.  Anna Sorensen's peace activism was another heavy-handed touch but, hey, this is opera.

WNO's Silent Night is an ideal opportunity for skeptics to step out from the safety of Verdi and Rossini trenches and venture into the minefield of modern opera, one careful step at a time. This one is safe.