Friday: Smithsonian Associates Talk: The Christmas Truce of 1914 via Zoom

This holiday season, it’s worth taking some time to remember a famous Christmas from history. On Friday, Dec. 8, the Smithsonian is hosting a talk with historian and battlefield guide Simon Jones on the Christmas Truce of 1914, a spontaneous outbreak of peace and goodwill during a time of war. During the first winter of World War I (1914-1918), about 100,000 British and German troops on opposing trenches in Belgium ceased fighting. They exchanged pleasantries, gifts, and even played impromptu soccer matches between the lines over the course of at least several days. The unofficial truce has been memorialized as a rare moment of humanity during a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. It epitomized the pointlessness of the war—if the regular soldiers could so easily have been friends with the opposing sides, why were they fighting at all? However, the 1914 truce was condemned by the military brass, and no large-scale truces took place for the remainder of the Great War. Jones is a freelance historian who specializes in WWI history, and he runs in-person battlefield tours in the Flanders region of Belgium. He will be dispelling myths and misconceptions of the truce by explaining the truly remarkable events of 1914. The Smithsonian Associates’ Christmas Truce of 1914 discussion starts at noon on Dec. 8 via Zoom. smithsonianassociates.org. $20– $25. —Tristan Jung

Saturday: Washington Bach Consort’s Christmas Oratorio at Strathmore

“It’s among the most charming and captivating Christmas traditions you’ll encounter if you want to veer off the heavily trodden path of Handel’s Messiah and Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker,” Dana Marsh, artistic director of the Washington Bach Consort, shares about Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio. The Consort will perform parts I, II, V, and VI of the oratorio at Strathmore’s Music Center for their annual performance of Bach’s Christmas classic. The Baroque choral masterpiece explores the nativity scene including Christ’s birth and annunciation to the shepherds, the journey of the wise men, and their adoration of the Christ child. Composed in 1734, concurrently with two other religious oratorios—the Ascension Oratorio and the Easter Oratorio—Bach’s Christmas Oratorio is the longest and most complex of the three works, interweaving older Bach compositions into new adaptations, and offering a sunnier, lighter sound than his other works. That’s what truly sets this splendid work apart: its levity and airiness (some early critics have believed better suited for secular works) is full of exuberance, beauty, and spirit worthy of the joyful subject matter. Amy Broadbent, soprano; Sylvia Leith, alto; Thomas Cooley, tenor and Evangelist; and Dashon Burton, bass, will all perform solos. Bach’s Christmas piece is also personally special for Marsh. “Christmas Oratorio is one of my all-time favorite works by Bach,” Marsh states in a press release. “It has special sentimental value for me, as it was my audition piece with the Bach Consort back in 2017.” In addition to the soaring music and ethereal vocals, there is also a free pre-concert lecture by noted Bach scholar Michael Marissen before the performance. Washington Bach Consort performs Bach’s Christmas Oratorio at 7 p.m. on Dec. 9 at the Music Center at Strathmore, 5301 Tuckerman Ln., North Bethesda. bachconsort.org. $25–$89. —Colleen Kennedy

Opens Tuesday: Girl From the North Country at the Kennedy Center 

When does a jukebox musical transcend the expectations of the genre? It’s probably hard to gauge something so subjective, but moving Bob Dylan to tears may just be one marker of success. Girl From the North Country, the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical opening at the Kennedy Center this week, features legendary songs from Dylan’s 60-year career as a singer-songwriter, activist, counterculture hero, American legend, and Kennedy Center Honoree. With stirring orchestrations by Simon Hale, Dylan’s classics—including “Like a Rolling Stone,” “I Want You,” “Hurricane,” “Make You Feel My Love,” “All Along the Watchtower,” and “Forever Young”—are reimagined in new ways as Dylan’s evocative and opaque lyrics are offered new dimensions by the cast of complex characters and their nuanced relationships. Written by celebrated Irish playwright Conor McPherson, Girl From the North Country follows the boarders at a guest house in Duluth, Minnesota, during the Great Depression: There are money troubles, mental and physical health issues, clandestine love affairs, a pregnancy to cover up, and other complications brewing between these good folks living during hard times. But when a bible salesman and unlucky boxer show up, the lives of all those staying at Laine’s boarding house are forever changed. It’s a soulful tribute not only to the genius of Dylan’s artistry, but, more importantly, a touching musical about being fully human—flawed, raw, vulnerable, and better for all of that, a sort of Our Town set to beloved folk songs. In a New York Times interview, Dylan—who was not involved in the production—described his response to seeing the musical onstage: “The play had me crying at the end. I can’t even say why. When the curtain came down, I was stunned…” Get those hankies ready. Conor McPherson’s Girl From the North Country, featuring the music of Bob Dylan, opens Dec. 12 and runs through the 31 at the Kennedy Center, 2700 F St. NW. kennedy-center.org. $49–$179. —Colleen Kennedy

Next Thursday: Our Hospitality (1923) With Live Musical Accompaniment at National Museum of American History

Would you believe that one of the great stunts in the history of cinema—a feat of derring-do and professional recklessness that rivals anything in the Mission Impossible franchise—took place a century ago? The 1923 film Our Hospitality finds director-star Buster Keaton in a Romeo and Juliet scenario, falling for a woman (played by his then-wife Natalie Talmadge) who happens to belong to a rival family sworn to kill him. But owing to societal mores, the bloodthirsty Canfields can’t lay a hand on the upstart McKay if he’s a guest in their house. Silent film buffs know Keaton as the great deadpan comic, and, as film scholar Dana Stevens argues in her 2022 Keaton biography, Camera Man, a figure who helped shape the medium—and the 20th century. Keaton was also a keen observer of human absurdity, and viewing a hundred-year-old film that’s set 100 years before its release, it’s sobering and frustrating to see that animosity remains such a constant in the human condition. In that pessimistic light, no wonder Keaton seemed always on the verge of danger. The series of stacking chase scenes here is entertaining enough, as Keaton feverishly evades the obstacles of man and of nature, culminating in a nail-bitingly realistic waterfall rescue that makes you wonder how anybody survived (okay, it was a set, but still). This screening at the National Museum of American History showcases a new score by veteran silent film composer Andrew Earle Simpson. Before the screening, museum staff will display some of the film’s original props, including an early wooden bicycle that was the very first movie prop acquired by the institution. The Smithsonian’s Our Hospitality event begins at 6:15 p.m. (screening at 7:30) on Dec. 14 at the National Museum of American History, 1300 Constitution Ave. NW. americanhistory.si.edu. Free with registration. —Pat Padua

Ends Dec. 31: A Touch of Red at Multiple Exposures Gallery

The most celebrated “touch of red” in recent artistic history is likely the little girl in the red coat who represented the only dash of color in the otherwise black-and-white Holocaust movie from 1993, Schindler’s List. None of the 27 photographs in the Multiple Exposures Gallery exhibit A Touch of Red approaches that degree of poignance; in fact, in some images, the splashes of red come across as something of an afterthought, as in the depictions of hoses and bollards at a car wash, a man on a sidewalk dragging a suitcase, and the exterior of a door to an otherwise white room. Fortunately, juror Phil Hutinet managed to locate some fine works within a pool of 14 artists: Clara Young Kim’s flat fire engine panel with old-school knobs and dials; Francine B. Livaditis’ wispy red reflection on the curved, metallic panels of the Frank Gehry-designed Guggenheim Museum Bilbao; Maureen Minehan’s partially red-painted house set against the blankness of a winter sky and snow-covered ground; Soomin Ham’s locksmith at work, surrounded by an overwhelming but orderly wall of key blanks; images by Minehan and Eric Johnson that experiment with the transformational effects of translucent raindrops; and Sarah Hood Salomon’s depiction of a red-hued memorial bouquet that’s unmoving even as cars zoom around it. The exhibit’s two most intriguing images share a curiosity in how a viewer will absorb and understand three-dimensional space. Minehan photographs a rotary phone set on a dusky beige ledge that resolves into a nearly flat background, while Kim deconstructs a tree, merging a wall shadow of its trunk and branches with a three-dimensional outreach of leaves that overlays the shadow. Notably, in neither image is red, or any other color, crucial to the photograph’s appeal. A Touch of Red runs through Dec. 31 at Multiple Exposures Gallery at the Torpedo Factory Art Center, 105 N. Union St., Alexandria. Daily from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. multipleexposuresgallery.com. Free. —Louis Jacobson