Composer Kevin Puts has become a prominent figure in the 2010s and early 2020s, with the likes of Renée Fleming recording his music. This 2011 opera, his first, helped his career along greatly; it has been performed often on both sides of the Atlantic. This is the first recording of the opera, and it should find a place in many American opera collections. Librettist Mark Campbell gets equal billing in Naxos' graphics here, and well he should; the opera is in three languages, or four if one includes the Italian pieces sung ...
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Composer Kevin Puts has become a prominent figure in the 2010s and early 2020s, with the likes of Renée Fleming recording his music. This 2011 opera, his first, helped his career along greatly; it has been performed often on both sides of the Atlantic. This is the first recording of the opera, and it should find a place in many American opera collections. Librettist Mark Campbell gets equal billing in Naxos' graphics here, and well he should; the opera is in three languages, or four if one includes the Italian pieces sung by the opera performer Anna Sørenson who plays a role in the plot. The story deals with the so-called Christmas truce of 1914, during which British, French, and German troops called a three-day halt to hostilities. It is based on the 2005 French film Joyeux Noël. This episode has been the subject of more or less sentimentalized songs and dramatic presentations in the past, but Campbell's libretto hits harder, depicting individual soldiers as they are suddenly pulled out of their...
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