Giuseppe VERDI (1813-1901)
Giovanna d’Arco (1845) [128.00]
Svetla Vassileva (soprano) - Giovanna; Evan Bowers (tenor) - Carlo; Renato Bruson (baritone) - Giacomo; Maurizio lo Piccolo (bass) - Talbot; Luigi Petroni (tenor) - Delil
Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Regio di Parma/Bruno Bartoletti
rec. Teatro Regio di Parma, 7 and 17 October 2008
extra: introduction to Giovanna d’Arco [10.00]
C MAJOR 721208 DVD [138.00]
Shaw in his preface to Saint Joan was extremely rude about Schiller’s
“witch’s cauldron of romance” which constituted his play
The Maid of Orleans. “Schiller’s Joan”, he observed
tartly, “has not a single point of contact with the real Joan, or indeed
with any mortal woman that ever walked the earth. There is really nothing
to be said of his play but that it is not about Joan at all, and can hardly
be said to pretend to be; for he makes her die on the battlefield, finding
her burning unbearable.” One can only imagine what he would have said
about Verdi’s treatment of the subject - for although his librettist
Temistocle Solera denied any connection with the Schiller play, his boiling-down
of the subject has too many points of resemblance with it to be a mere coincidence.
As it happens he would not even have been aware of the existence of the score,
which was believed to have been lost (apart from the Overture) before it was
revived for Renata Tebaldi in 1951. It didn’t reach the stage in London
until a student production in 1966.
Solera’s adaptation reduces the story of Joan of Arc to a feeble and
rather brief operatic plot, with only a very tangential reference to historical
accuracy; but it does contain two elements which would strongly have appealed
to the young Verdi. In the first place it continues the theme which runs so
vibrantly through his early operas from his ‘galley years’, that
of a nation struggling for freedom against an alien oppressor. Secondly it
contains yet another of his portraits of a father and daughter at odds with
each other and finally finding reconciliation. At the point in the coronation
scene where father and daughter confront each other, Verdi’s music suddenly
catches fire in a superb concertato and thereafter maintains a high
level to the end. The opera was highly popular in the nineteenth century,
but was frequently performed with a new plot and amended text under the title
of Orietta di Lesbo, which would at least avoid any suggestion that
the subject matter of the work was the career of Joan of Arc.
Be that as it may, Verdi hardly achieves in this score the mastery of his
themes that was to characterise his later work. Much of the earlier music
is frankly pretty vulgar, and the scene in which Joan is tempted by devils
and encouraged by angels is laughably meretricious; the booklet quotes a particularly
vituperative criticism of this passage by Hanslick. All of that said, the
musical performance on this DVD is very good, and Bruno Bartoletti does what
he can to tone down the insistent rum-ti-tum of the orchestra. In the opening
scene Evan Bowers is a rather epicene Charles VII, but he sings with honeyed
tone and produces a good effect. Svetla Vassileva as Joan has an attractively
tomboyish look, and her quiet singing is raptly beautiful; but when she puts
pressure on the voice, a juddering enters the tone which at times threatens
to spill over into a positively Slavonic wobble. Renato Bruson has been around
for many years, but his voice remains in good shape despite some occasional
suggestions of wear. He produces a real character out of Joan’s father’s
annoyingly unmotivated changes of mood and purpose. Both he and Vassileva
make the most of their confrontation in the coronation scene, where their
singing suddenly achieves a real Verdian momentum. The two other parts are
hardly more than ciphers, but Maurizio lo Piccolo and Luigi Petroni acquit
themselves well. The chorus, who have a great deal to do, are lustily full-throated
and enthusiastic.
The production is pretty basic, but it gets all the characters in the right
places at the right times and leaves them to sing, which is after all what
early Verdi is all about. The costumes are authentically fifteenth century,
and the scenery is properly atmospheric.
In his review of the original production in Opera magazine, George
Loomis referred to Gabriele Lavia’s intention to draw parallels with
the Italian Risorgimento, but these allusions are hardly noticeable
in the video production as seen here. One listens in vain for audible evidence
of the use of the harmonium in the chorus of demons, or for the ‘fisarmonica’
in the chorus of angels.
In a set which constitutes part of a historically informed series recording
the complete operas of Verdi, it is slightly alarming to find the booklet
note by Anselm Gerhard making reference at some length to an incident at the
première of the opera at La Scala on “15 February 1841”.
In fact the première took place some five years later; and the misquoted
date is not simply a misprint, since it recurs in all four languages in the
booklet. One other historical inaccuracy should also be noted. The DVD titles
refer to the various scenes as Act One, Act Two, Act Three and Act
Four; but in fact Giovanna d’Arco is described by Verdi as
an opera in “a Prologue and Three Acts”.
We have hardly been blessed with a superfluity of recordings of Giovanna
d’Arco. The only studio set is that by James Levine made some forty
years ago - his first complete opera recording - but still available. There
has been one previous DVD recording, a 1989 production by Werner Herzog (also
with Bruson as Joan’s father) which is also still listed. I have not
seen this performance since it first appeared on television over twenty years
ago, but I do not recall the production as being anything special or as convincing
as this. This DVD therefore has the field pretty much to itself, and it is
a fully worthy representation of a frustratingly uneven work.
Paul Corfield Godfrey
A fully worthy representation of a frustratingly uneven work.
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