Posted on 08/15/2024 10:50:54 AM PDT by Miami Rebel
The first thing you notice about Wolf Trap Opera’s new production of “Silent Night” — composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell’s Pulitzer Prize-winning 2011 opera — is its broken frame. Directors Tonya and Ryan McKinny have mounted their production at the Barns like a painting, the perimeter of the stage bound by a gilded frame, its bottom edge snapped and in fragments on the floor. Has it been destroyed by war? Looted by thieves? Or does the McKinnys’ staging suggest a different kind of irreparable damage? An opera based on Christian Carion’s 2005 film “Joyeux Noël,” which chronicles the fleeting Christmas truce struck in 1914 between squads of World War I combatants, would seem out of season in mid-August. But a larger global context of ongoing crisis — incursions, invasions, unheeded calls for cease-fire — amplifies both the music and the message of “Silent Night,” which hits you like a shell and hangs out for a while between your ears. This impact is largely thanks to the McKinny treatment, which employs the frame not just as metaphor but as staging strategy. A retractable translucent screen — employed for video projections designed by Adam Larsen and filmed by Ryan McKinny — hinted at the flat surface of a canvas. When retracted, the lighting design of Colin K. Bills and scenery of Lawrence Moten bestowed the tight real estate of the Barns stage with uncanny depth and dimension. Thus, transitions between a Berlin opera house and the chaos of no man’s land transpire with the ease of a dream that curdles into a nightmare. Projected paintings by Otto Dix, J.B. Morrall and Vasily Vereshchagin (a garish mound of skulls) tint the tilted stage like memories softly intruding on each other.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
It's beautiful, melodic, melancholy piece that was written by a young composer about the first Christmas of World War One, when there was a brief respite for the soldiers in the trenches. I've yet to see it staged.
I spent 19 years in the DC area and Wolf Trap was one of my favorite venues.
“would seem out of season in mid-August”
But not really out of season, in fact right on time, if reports that we’ve been lie to by the cabal about the date of Christ’s birth are true.
Thank you.
“... if reports that we’ve been lie to by the cabal about the date of Christ’s birth are true.”
What reports? What cabal??
What you need badly is to find the answer to your second question. I can help if necessary.
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