Opera Orlando is staging a Pulitzer Prize-winning opera based on true events during World War One. “Silent Night” examines the spontaneous Christmas Eve ceasefire of 1914, when a carol sung on the battlefield brought together soldiers from opposing trenches into a shared temporary peace.
Grabriel Preisser is Executive Director of Opera Orlando. He’s also performing in “Silent Night” in its Central Florida premiere, as he did in the opera’s national premiere in Minnesota in 2011 (fun fact: Orlando’s performance is using the costumes, including realistic-looking WWI uniforms, from that premiere production). Preisser said the extraordinary true story of the “Christmas truce” still stands as a testament to humanity’s desire for connection, even in the face of one of history’s most brutal wars.
Preisser shared the story as letters from the western front documented it.
“It just so happens that there was an opera singer who was drafted into the war, and on that fateful evening of December 24, 1914, his buddies were like, ‘Hey, go sing some songs out there for us, entertain us a little bit,’ and his voice carried across the trench to the other side… because the trenches were so close. At some spots, it was only 50 yards in between the Scottish, British, French side and the German side. So they heard this beautiful voice, and it pierced their souls.”
Preisser emphasized that the power and the universal language of music brought the soldiers out from their trenches and into the No Man’s Land in between. And throughout the next day, peace held.
“In several parts of the Western Front, some of them played soccer,” said Preisser. “Some of them did a mass burial together to bury those that had fallen from the battles the days before. They exchanged gifts with each other. They showed each other pictures of their wives or their girlfriends back home.”
Of course, this peace could not last. While lieutenants at the front hastily called an official temporary ceasefire, the militaries’ top brass back at home were furious. Some of those lieutenants were court-martialed, and the soldiers were reassigned to other, often more dangerous parts of the front.
They couldn’t stay where they were. They had seen humanity in one another. They had become friends.
“The beautiful message, I think, in this is that there isn't humanity in war, but there is humanity in the warrior. There is humanity in the soldier,” said Preisser.
