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Conductor: Bruno Bartoletti
Stars: Evan Bowers, Renato Bruson, Svetla Vassileva.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2813088/
7th Verdi opera.
First performed at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, 1845.
Time: 1429
Place: Domrémy, Reims and near Rouen, France
Filmed at Teatro Regio di Parma.
In this version, she does not get burned at the stake. Here the future king Charles VII (Carlo) falls in love with her, but Joan listens to her voices, and forsakes earthly love, preferring instead to fight battles and win. Unfortunately, her father thinks her voices are the Devil, but realizes his mistake when he hears her prayers, and frees her from the stake before the fire. She succumbs to battlefield injuries.
Would be interesting to experience the Teatro Regio di Parma in person. 1200 seats (Met is 3800) and looks gorgeous. But the TV version is much better at getting faces.
Since all these have been staged at Teatro Regio di Parma (except the first, which was in a much smaller venue, but was produced with the Parma team), I've gotten used to their spartan tastes. The costumes are good, and we get interesting iron bars when Joan is imprisoned (more like a tiger cage or perimeter boundary of a wealthy estate than a prison cell), but otherwise it's decorated walls, sometimes stairs, and little else. Here we got some trees shedding flower petals, and gnarled roots that could be boulders, and plenty of spears and armor, but furniture seems rare.
Joan's father, Renato Bruson, is another veteran of opera recordings, with video credits on IMDb back to the '70s. And he's in the top 4 cast on most of them, sometimes the first, meaning the star, not just in order of appearance/alphabetical nonsense.
I like the singing & acting here. DNFSC.
The Great Course mentions this opera, but basically jumps from Ernani to Macbeth.
Per the 2012 featurette, without naming the source of world-wide most-performed rankings, this is 21st among Verdi's operas, 343rd among all operas. (another source-less list of the top 100; Operabase Statistics)
Unitel, cond. Bartoletti; 8
