It\u2019s a famous story. One Christmas Eve early in the first World War, forces on either side of the Western Front decided to declare a truce, put down their weapons, exchange gifts and sing carols.<\/p>\n
According to a few photographs, soldiers\u2019 letters back to their families and their own journals this wasn\u2019t some script written for a Hallmark TV movie but really happened \u2013 although there have likely been some embellishments over the years.<\/p>\n
German, French and British troops met in the no-man\u2019s land, a 400-mile line through France and Belgium, retrieved their dead and got along. It never happened again.<\/p>\n
A movie was made of this in 2005, in turn inspiring the 2011 opera by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campcell which went on to win the Pulitzer Prize for Music. Now Houston Grand Opera will bring Silent Night \u00a0to the stage starting this Friday, January 23 in a Houston premiere.<\/p>\n
The story doesn\u2019t begin with the night of the ceasefire, but with the back stories of the main characters showing us something of their lives before they go off to war.<\/p>\n
Tenor Miles\u00a0Mykkanen will make his HGO debut as\u00a0Nikolaus\u00a0Sprink, with\u00a0Butler Studio\u00a0tenor Michael McDermott\u00a0performing\u00a0the role\u00a0on\u00a0Feb. 4. The opera\u2019s cast\u00a0also\u00a0includes\u00a0soprano Sylvia\u00a0D\u2019Eramo in her company debut as\u00a0Anna S\u00f8rensen;\u00a0bass-baritone Ryan McKinny,\u00a0baritone Iurii Samoilov,\u00a0and baritone Thomas Glass\u00a0as the\u00a0story\u2019s three lieutenants; and\u00a0tenor Jack Swanson\u00a0as the soldier Jonathan Dale. \u00a0James Robinson directs.<\/p>\n
Japanese-American conductor Kensho Watanabe, who will be making his company debut with HGO, has worked with composer Puts, most recently when he made his Metropolitan Opera debut conducting Puts\u2019 latest opera The Hours. He expresses a lot of admiration for Puts including his Pulitzer Prize-winning work.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love the way Kevin writes for the voice and also particularly how he writes for chorus. There\u2019s many, many scenes that involve chorus and two very important chorus numbers that occur in both acts are especially notable.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe has a lot of experience writing for orchestra and I also come from a symphonic background, I was a violinist before. So, there\u2019s a lot of stuff for the orchestra to really play and take part in the narrative of the opera and the drama of all of it so it keeps the conductor and the orchestra very, very involved which I enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watanabe believes the opera has remained so popular because most people have an idea of what went on in World War I. \u201cThey have an understanding of the brutal trench warfare that occurred. And this momentary truce that occurred on Christmas Eve.<\/p>\n
\u201cI also find it very interesting that Kevin\u2019s music spans various styles. While the opera begins with the two lead characters [German tenor Nikolaus Sprink and his lover Norwegian soprano Anna S\u00f8rense] \u00a0they\u2019re supposed to be professional opera singers working in Germany so when the war starts the first scene actually depicts them singing a Mozart like opera. \u201c<\/p>\n
Note this is Mozart like, not Mozart. Puts incorporated several different styles of music in his composition including Those styles include \u201cwar anthems, folk songs, hymns and German Lieder,\u201d as described by HGO.<\/p>\n
It is also an opera sung in four different languages over its 2-1\/2 hours,\u00a0 Watanabe \u00a0says. \u00a0Besides the German, British\/Scots and French soldiers, there\u2019s the operatic scene in Italian, he says. \u201cIt feels in a way because each character is singing in in their native language, that there\u2019s something that makes the characters a little bit more real and believable.<\/p>\n
The opera is also what happens afterwards. \u201cThe consequences these soldiers face from their superiors who were emotionally, psychologically and physically removed from the brutality of war. And yet they \u00a0were the ones who were coercing their subordinates to continue to \u00a0kill each other.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think each character is trying to find their own agency in a situation where everyone seems very helpless. \u00a0No one is able \u00a0to make decisions for themselves. I think each officer, each soldier is trying to find some way to control the situation or make the best of it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Watanabe\u2019s background includes playing the violin in orchestras. \u201cWhat really took me to conducting was really my love of chamber music. I really enjoyed playing in quartets. More specifically being a second violinis tor a violis.\u201d\u00a0 He liked what he called the internal communication that happens among the musicians.<\/p>\n
He fell into conducting during his college years. He found the same energy he\u2019d experienced in chamber music but \u201cin some ways magnified across many more musicians.\u201d<\/p>\n
A college biology major, Watanabe was going to be a doctor but decided that music had more of an appeal for him. Asked his parents\u2019 initial reaction, he says: \u201cIf they were hooked up to a lie detector, they would admit perhaps that for the first maybe 48 to 72 hours they were disappointed.\u201d As he sees it, though, they were the ones that encouraged him to undertake extracurricular activities.<\/p>\n
His Bachelor of Science degree from Yale where he studied molecular, cellular and developmental biology was far from a wasted exercise, though. \u00a0He likes learning from people with all different disciplines. And he still applies that logical, scientific thinking to music. He holds a Master of Music degree from Yale as well.<\/p>\n
As for the Peace in the Trenches opera, he believes \u201cRegardless of the time period I think that if there is a take home of this opera for me it\u2019s important that we make the effort to try to understand someone that seemingly is in opposition to what we think or believe.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are many scenes where the French, Scottish or German officers\u00a0 that are directly involved in the fighting have these mini summits in no man\u2019s land to discuss whether they\u2019re going to have the truce or if they\u2019re going to extend the truce so there\u2019ll be time to bury the dead soldiers that are just lying in no man\u2019s land for days.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opera does a really great job in depicting the tension between these three. Even the French and Scottish who are seemingly working together, who are trying to work together, have many cultural differences and many differences of thought, not alone the difference in language.<\/p>\n
\u201cYet\u00a0 there is some power in trying to find a commonality. I\u2019m not trying to sugarcoat it. I think however that if something can be said about this opera: \u00a0It is important even if it feels futile to try to make an effort to try to understand the other.\u201d<\/p>\n
One more aspect that Watanabe brought up to recommend the opera.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf anyone\u2019s a bagpipe enthusiast I think this might be a very rare opportunity to hear bag pipes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Performances are scheduled for January 23 through February at 7:30 p.m. Saturday and Wednesday and 2 p.m. Sundays at Wortham Theater Center, 501 Texas. For more information, call 713-228-6737 or visit houstongrandopera.org. $25-$295.50.<\/p>\n