You Can Go Home Again

Jul 23, 2024

By: Mark Campbell, Silent Night librettist

Twenty years ago, Wolf Trap Opera premiered my first libretto for a full-length opera at The Barns at Wolf Trap. The composer was John Musto, the commissioner/producer was Kim Pensinger Witman, the director was Leon Major, and the opera was Volpone. Some 40+ operatic works later, I look back on that nurturing, fun, and wonderfully collaborative experience with great fondness; I had been working in musical theater and, somehow in a barn in Northern Virginia, I found a home in this strange, new (at least to me) world called opera.

Eight years after that time of Volpone, my 10^th opera Silent Night premiered at Minnesota Opera. Silent Night originated when Dale Johnson, the company’s former artistic director, came up with the idea of adapting Christian Carion’s 2005 screenplay Joyeux Noel into an opera. Dale also uncannily identified Kevin Puts as the ideal composer for the work—a choice that should be noted in the annuls of operatic history—and paired us as collaborators.

Dale’s idea was a smart one, but there were many challenges in transforming Joyeux Noel into a work for the operatic stage. While my libretto retained most of the same principal characters and basic plotline, I diverged in many ways from Mr. Carion’s fictionalized account of the 1914 Christmas truces to create a stage-worthy work and showcase traditional opera elements.

Examples of this divergence abound. In Act I, Lieutenant Audebert composes a letter to his wife while counting his wounded, dead, and missing soldiers, which segues into the “Sleep” chorus sung by all three platoons in the trenches. Neither of these moments occur in the movie—at most, they are implied. But the opera needed a scene early on to establish Audebert’s character and his home life, while also creating a commonality among all the soldiers—both enemies and allies alike.

Several other distinct deviations occur in Act II. In the movie, Anna has but a few words about the devastation of war. I expanded that into an entire aria (“Irgendwo, irgendwann…”). Lieutenant Horstmayer’s conflicts as a Jew and German patriot only get a passing mention in Carion’s film, but after much research, I decided to expand on it in Sprink’s castigation of blind nationalism (“Dem Vaterland?”). Finally, I added a letter scene in this act to reestablish the concordance among soldiers and illustrate how the Christmas truces were not forgotten.

Early in the libretto process, I decided to keep the text in three different languages (five if you count Latin and Italian). This helped create dramaturgical barriers for the soldiers to overcome and became a nice way to turn solo lines into duets and trios because of the need for translation.

Kevin and I also chose to create original songs for the diegetic moments of the story to make them musically organic. These included the Mozartian duet at the top of the opera, the duet at the chalet, the Scottish ballad about “home,” and the two Christmas carols.

While we’re on the subject of Kevin’s music, I felt very fortunate to have been the first person to hear him play early sketches of the score. At his home in Yonkers, he nervously plunked out some notes on his piano and sang—in the deflective way most composers sing. I knew then and there what Opera News said later about Silent Night, “With this remarkable debut, Puts assumes a central place in the American opera firmament.” Credit for the opera’s success must also be given to the shepherding of Minnesota Opera, as well as director Eric Simonson and conductor Michael Christie. (An interesting side note: Ryan Taylor, now the General Director of Minnesota Opera, appeared as Voltore in the original production of Volpone.)

With The Barns’ more intimate space, the orchestra, chorus, and staging for Wolf Trap Opera’s production will be greatly pared back from the original. WTO’s presentation may not have the elaborate stage elements of the opera’s previous 22 productions, but Wolf Trap has never been about spectacle or numbers. Its essence and core have always been about musical storytelling. That was as true of Volpone 20 years ago as it is today, and it’s one aspect about WTO’s audiences that I cherish. It’s great to be back home.

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Tickets on sale now for Wolf Trap Opera’s production of Silent Night on August 9, 11, 15, and 17 at The Barns

The Pulitzer Prize and Grammy Award-winning works of librettist/lyricist Mark Campbell are among the most successful in the contemporary opera canon. Campbell has written 41 operas, seven musicals, nine song cycles, and five oratorios. In 2020, he created the Campbell Opera Librettist Prize, the first award for librettists in the art form’s history. markcampbellwords.com

Photos: Gwiazdka żołnierska, Wojciech Kossak, 1915; WWI Battlefield at Night, Gunner F. J. Mears, circa 1913-1930