Pulitzer-winning ‘Silent Night’ returns in Minnesota Opera’s 2018-19 season

Minnesota Opera’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Silent Night” comes home in November as part of the opera’s 2018-19 season. “Silent Night” was commissioned by Minnesota Opera and premiered in St. Paul in 2011. It won the 2012 Pulitzer Prize for Music and has been staged around the world.

“Silent Night” tells the story of the Christmas Eve truce of 1914. The opera’s return honors the centennial of the end of World War I, according to a Minnesota Opera news release announcing the season Tuesday.

“Silent Night” is one of two Minnesota Opera-commissioned pieces in the season. In March 2019, “The Fix” by composer Joel Puckett and librettist Eric Simonson (who also returns to direct “Silent Night”) will make its world premiere, with the tale of Shoeless Joe and the 1919 Black Sox scandal.

The season includes the Minnesota Opera premiere of “The Italian Straw Hat” by Nino Rota in late January 2019. Rota is the composer best known for “The Godfather” movie scores. The 1950s comic opera is about a groom who gallops around Paris on his wedding day in search of a straw hat to replace the one his horse has eaten.

Two opera classics round out the five-show season: Puccini’s “La Rondine” in October and Verdi’s “La Traviata” in May 2019. It’s the Minnesota Opera premiere of “La Rondine,” and it opens the season.

All five of the 2018-19 Minnesota Opera productions will take place at the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts.

Season ticket packages ($821-$60) for the 2018-19 season are available now online at 612-333-6669 or mnopera.org. Single tickets go on sale in August.