On Wednesday, Nov. 11, in honor of Veterans Day, Opera Philadelphia will stream its film adaptation of David T. Little’s Soldier Songs for free on its Youtube channel.
David T. Little began work on his opera Soldier Songs in 2004, after being invited to his former high school to speak about his life as a composer. The next speaker up was a childhood friend, Justen Bennett, who spoke about his experience as a soldier serving in Iraq. Little later recalled that the contrast of Bennett’s talk made him feel a little self-conscious and embarrassed. After leaving the auditorium, Little came upon the school’s display case. He remembered it exhibiting student memories and achievements, but now found it filled with photos of alumni serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. In the Composer’s Note to the album release of Soldier Songs, Little recalled that the display case made him reflect on the “absolutist position” he held on war when he was younger: “that war was always wrong, and that those who signed up to fight it were always fools. And yet, here were my friends — smart kids all — now in the desert defusing land mines.” For Little, this moment was the first whisper of what would become Soldier Songs.
Little’s experience at his former high school branched into a number of interviews with veterans of World War II, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, and Afghanistan. Little noted that for most of these veterans, “this was the first time they had ever talked about their experience… This became central to the piece — what, for me, this piece is about: the impossibility of the telling.” These interviews heavily informed Soldier Songs’ text, present sometimes verbatim in the opera’s sole vocal role: the Soldier. Featuring just one performer, the opera’s form becomes quite experimental — a journey through the Soldier’s childhood, active service, and life after service. After the opera’s 2006 premier by the Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, Eric Haines, writing for the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, identified Soldier Songs not as a “loosely connected cycle, but a dramatic, theatrical solo cantata that builds to a heartrending climax.”
Haines also remarked that “Little's compositional language is eclectic and diverse, encompassing 19th-century Romanticism and polytonality, percussive counterpoint and musical theatre lyricism, semi-tone tuning and diatonic harmonies.” This compositional diversity was employed to full effect in the San Diego Opera’s 2016 staging of Soldier Songs. Attuned to the fractured nature of military violence, the score is fittingly disorienting, swiftly vacillating between a number of contrasting states — childhood levity in “Real American Heroes;” an unsettling sense of power in “Still Life With Tank And Ipod;” frenetic, horrified disbelief in “Hollywood Ending;” and somber, grieved reflection in “Two Marines.”
Opera Philadelphia’s Veterans Day stream will feature their film adaptation of Soldier Songs. Directed by and starring baritone Johnathan McCullough, the film was originally debuted in 2021 to critical acclaim, earning a nomination for a GRAMMY Award for Best Opera Recording.
Soldier Songs has been widely staged by a number of companies — including the Los Angeles Opera, Atlanta Opera, Des Moines Metro Opera, Chicago Opera Theater, among others — but Opera Philadelphia was the first company to bring Soldier Songs from the stage to the screen. Shot locally at the Brandywine Conservancy’s Birmingham Hill Preserve in Chester County, the film preserves the opera’s call for a solitary performer.
Anthony Roth Costanzo, General Director and President of Opera Philadelphia, spoke on the continual relevance of Soldier Songs and McCullough’s film: “Soldier Songs remains as urgent and resonant today as when David first created it 20 years ago…Making this extraordinary film available for free gives audiences everywhere a chance to experience this work that weaves a complex narrative about war, the people who fight it, and the ways its effects continue long after the battlefield.”