Silent Night (opera)

Silent Night is an opera by composer Kevin Puts and librettist Mark Campbell. As Silent Night: Opera in Two Acts the work had its world premiere at the Ordway Theater, Saint Paul, Minnesota, on November 12, 2011 under the directorship and dramaturgy of Eric Simonson. As Silent Night, the opera had its East Coast premiere at the Philadelphia Academy of Music on February 8, 2013. It premiered in the Southwest at Bass Performance Hall with Fort Worth Opera on May 4, 2014. The European premiere took place on October 24, 2014, at the Wexford Festival Opera in Ireland. In 2014 the work was staged at the Calgary Opera and the Cincinnati Opera, and in 2015 it was performed at the Opéra de Montréal and the Lyric Opera of Kansas City. The opera won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music.

The libretto is based on the multilingual screenplay by Christian Carion for the 2005 film Joyeux Noël that tells a story during the historical short-lived spontaneous 1914 Christmas truce between enemy combatants in World War I. According to characters and situations, the libretto is mostly sung in English, French and German, but also some Italian and Latin.

The opera was commissioned by Minnesota Opera as part of its New Works Initiative in co-production with Opera Philadelphia. For Kevin Puts, it was his first opera, while Mark Campbell had written librettos before.

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