By Deborah Brevoort
Librettist for The Knock
In 2010, I was commissioned to write The Comfort Team, a play about military spouses for the Virginia Stage Company in Norfolk, Virginia. At the time, the United States had been at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for nearly 10 years and the Norfolk community—home to the world’s largest military installation—was filled with wives who were holding down the home front. Over a three-year period, I immersed myself in military life and conducted interviews with 43 spouses of all ages from every rank, culture, race, economic class, geographical region, and branch of the armed services.
Military culture, I quickly discovered, has a dizzying set of protocols and customs that are strictly observed. These protocols form the substance of military life and govern its rituals. It was important to honor them while writing The Knock; they form the structure for the libretto and score, and composer Aleksandra Vrebalov and I made every effort to ensure they were represented as accurately as possible. The military is also a culture where gender roles fall along traditional lines, and we tried to represent that too. Wives are required to put the needs of the servicemen first and are expected to volunteer in activities to assist in the smooth functioning of the military effort. One of those is the Spouse Club, which is how the Command Office communicates with wives during deployments. The gathering of wives in The Knock is a meeting of the Spouse Club.
Armando Contreras as Lt. Gonzalez in the film version of The Knock. Courtesy of the Glimmerglass Festival.
During my time in Norfolk, I heard many stories about “the knock.” They were told to me in places like McDonald’s or Starbucks—everyday locations where we go about our everyday lives. As I sat listening to these stories, while watching other families eat lunch or drink coffee, unaware of the nightmare taking place at my table, I was struck by the disconnect, and how emblematic it was for our country, where most of us go through our lives unaware of the burdens being carried by the military families in our orphan. It was this disconnect that I tried to capture in the libretto when our young Army officer, who is given a gut-wrenching task, drives past box stores while others are shopping, and then has to change into his uniform in a McDonald’s men’s room while families are eating Happy Meals.
Mary-Hollis Hundley as Jo Jenner in the film version of The Knock. Courtesy of the Glimmerglass Festival.
The story of military wives left behind on the home front is one that continues to be overlooked in the flurry of operas and plays about soldiers coming home from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. Thousands of women serve our country and make huge sacrifices for our war efforts—something most of us are not even aware of. These are characters we never get to see on the opera stage, and it is our hope that The Knock will bring their story to light.
A heartfelt thanks to all of the wives who opened their homes and hearts to me and who shared the struggles, rewards, pleasures, and travails of being married to the military. I dedicate The Knock to all of the wives I interviewed—and to military wives everywhere—who serve our country in the shadows. We owe you much.
Deborah Brevoort’s operas have been produced at leading U.S. companies such as the Glimmerglass, Ft. Worth, Chicago Opera Theater, Opera Colorado, ALT, and NYC’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. She serves as the librettist mentor for Washington National Opera’s American Opera Initiative.
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