“Stille Nacht”

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COMING TO YOUR HOME FOR THE HOLIDAY SEASON. Celebrate with us as we present a special holiday concert, livestreamed from the Ordway Concert Hall. Enjoy an evening featuring selections by Richard Rodgers, Irving Berlin, Joni Mitchell, Jeremy Messersmith, Miguel Bernal Jiménez, and more, starring past participants of Minnesota Opera’s Resident Artist and Project Opera training programs.

The story of the World War I Christmas Truce of 1914 has provided the inspiration for so many compelling works — including Minnesota Opera’s Pulitzer Prize-winning commission of the opera “Silent Night” by Kevin Puts and Mark Campbell — and serves tonight as our backdrop for “Silent Night/Stille Nacht”. On Christmas Eve, British soldiers caught the faint singing of “Stille Nacht” from the German trenches, applauded them, and returned the song with their own English version of the well-known carol. The following morning of Christmas Day, British and German soldiers on some battlefields emerged from the safety of their trenches — not to exchange gunfire, but to exchange handshakes, Christmas wishes, and gifts in a grassroots ceasefire not at all sanctioned by the high command of either army. While we know the awful history of the rest of that war, as well as the next, the lesson of two bitter enemies singing the words of Christmas peace together in “Silent Night” remains: we ought not lose sight of each other’s humanity, even in the very worst of circumstances.

Music by Franz Xaver Gruber
Lyrics by Joseph Mohr

Performed by:
Liv Redpath, soprano
Zoie Reams, mezzo-soprano
Daniel Montenegro, tenor
Thomas Glass, baritone
Joseph Li, Arranger / Pianist