Giovanna D'Arco [Blu-ray]

The Audience Loved It!!
And I liked it a lot! But it is a somewhat uneven performance, when viewed objectively.

Giovanna d'Arco is Verdi's seventh opera; it is a melodic, fast paced, musically intense work that enjoys some sustained popularity in Italy, but less so elsewhere. And with Parma being in the heart of "Verdi Country", the reaction of the audience gives a new definition to the word enthusiastic. Personally, I was first introduced to the work in a recording with Caballe, Milnes and Domingo, and "bonded" with it at first hearing.

At the outset, I feel it necesssary to note that this is a regional Italian opera company; it is not the Met. The stage is small, and I suspect that the Parma budget for staging opera is a bit less than the Met's. Staging, costumes, sets, etc. reflect this.

That said, there is some wonderful singing in this performance, and some that is a bit less so. Svetla Vassileva is an intense Giovanna. Berger ("Verdi With a Vengeance") notes that the...

Impressive production of an underrated early Verdi
By the time Verdi came to compose Giovanna D'Arco in 1845, the composer was eager to take on more substantial works of literary merit with the kind of romantic scope and emotional range that suited and appealed to his musical sensibility. He had engaged the young poet Francisco Maria Piave to work on his Victor Hugo adaptation, Ernani, and he would soon come to tackle his first Shakespeare work with Macbeth the following year. For Giovanna D'Arco, Verdi found inspiration in Friedrich von Schiller's story of Joan of Arc, finding material for a true dramma lirico that was a match for his developing talent, but also clearly responding personally to the revolutionary sentiments that echoed with the contemporary reality of Risorgimento Italy.

The grand epic nature of the story and Verdi's responsiveness towards it is immediately evident in the composer's scoring for the overture and in his personal reworking of the material. Giovanna D'Arco deals with a classic high Romantic...

A Fable against oppression......almost.
Giovanna D'Arco is number seven of the early "Galley Slave Years" of Verdi opera compositions. It followed a few months, 15 February 1845, after I Due Foscare in November 1844. For this production at La Scala Milan the services of their in-house librettist Temistocle Solera was made available. He was considered a better poet and man of the theatre than the more pedantic but serviceable Piave that Verdi had used for Ernani and I Due Foscari. The play "Die Jungfrau von Orleans" by Frederick Schiller is a long rambling highly romantic paean to freedom's fight against the mighty oppressors. Since the play was not on Verdi's list of possible subjects for future operas, it's probable that the subject was given to him by the management.
I have particular interest in Giovanna D'Arco because early on in my exploration of opera I became acquainted with Tchaikovski's opera "The Maid of Orleans" based on the same Schiller play. The two operas were written many years apart: Verdi's in 1845...

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