instrumentation: 3.3.2.2. - 4.3.3.1. - timp; 3 perc; hp - str

Sometime in 2008, I received an unexpected phone call from Dale Johnson, then Artistic Director of Minnesota Opera. He was interested in commissioning an operatic adaptation of Joyeux Noel, the 2005 Christian Carion film based on the spontaneous cease-fires and celebrations which took place along the Western Front on the first Christmas Eve of World War I. While I had produced a rather large catalog of orchestral works by 2008, the...