Dec. 22. One of the more successful new pieces of American art to emerge this decade was “Silent Night,” commissioned by the Minnesota Opera, which premiered it in 2012. Critics raved and composer Kevin Puts got a Pulitzer Prize for music. The story, based on the 2005, Oscar-nominated film “Joyeux Noël,” recounts a Christmas Eve, during World War I, when soldiers on both sides laid down their weapons and joined in song. Schmaltzy? Of course it is — until the corpses start appearing on stage. Fittingly, it is sung in French, English, German, Italian and Latin (with subtitles in English). A taped production of the two-act opera is making the public-television rounds and comes to Rocky Mountain PBS at 1 p.m. on Dec. 22. Michael Christie, a champion of fresh work, conducts.
