Jona Vark was a real person who lived a
short but eventful life from about 14 12
to her death at the age of 19 when she
burned at the stake in rural on May
thirtieth 1431 she was an illiterate
girl who said she heard and saw visions
of the Archangel Michael at the age of
12 that inspired her to lead an army
against England and its Burgundian
allies to defend the French monarchy she
was called a visionary a heretic a
sorceress a witch a crossdresser and
much more her public execution was
horrific and her remains were tossed
into the sin River Joan of Arc was
beatified in 1909 and canonized as a
saint in 1920 she was a woman for all
media and became appealing as a symbol
as a heroine as an icon to Christians to
freedom fighters to feminists through
all kinds of people who felt that they
were marginalized in one way or another
and her life or what we perceive of as
her life became profoundly important
source material for every kind of
creative artist the problem in telling
the story of Joan of Arc is that even
though she only lived 19 years her life
was incredibly eventful and because it
was the early 15th century the source
material is not reliable there are a few
letters there are paintings there are
accounts that are told about Joan's life
but she's become a myth she was
multimedia well before multimedia
existed the only painting done of her in
her lifetime was destroyed but we have
paintings done by people who saw those
paintings and that's as close as we get
we have accounts from church figures we
have it councilman kings of France we
have accounts from the British
all of them tell a very different story
the fact that Joan to lead the French
army dressed as a man was considered by
some people noble by other people
heretical so the thing about Joan of Arc
is that she's amazingly polarizing and
when you take her story and put it in a
different form whether it's an opera a
play an oratorio a film what it becomes
is the creator's version of what Joan of
Arc represents to him or her Verdi saw
her as a noble figure and verdi in the
1840s Road operas that tried to inspire
Italians to throw off the yoke of
foreign domination so to have a figure
such as a young woman leading the battle
leading the charge against foreign
occupiers in Jones case it was the
British was a perfect surrogate for
Italian audiences in Milan who were
under the domination of Austria
Tchaikovsky did another very famous
version of the maid of Orleans the
Schiller play it was his sixth of his
11th operas it came right after Eugene
Onegin and came in 1878 1879 at a time
when there are struggles with the royal
family in st. Petersburg in which the
serfs demanded to be set free it was a
very powerful work at a very powerful
concept for those who embraced it
Tchaikovsky himself wrote the libretto
the work that we're going to see if the
New York Philharmonic Jean Darko boucher
Joan of Arc at the stake is an oratorio
by artur honegger a Swiss composer it
was commissioned by ida Rubenstein who
was a dancer and actress it was set to a
libretto by paul claudel and the work
runs about 70 minutes Claudel was a very
controversial figure and he was more
famous in his time than Honaker Claudel
was perhaps Frances leading playwright
in the early 20th century some people
said that he and bertolt brecht were the
two
most important European playwrights of
that time Claudel had a very strong
religious conversion and for him joan
was a christian figure she was a saint
she was carrying out the visions that
had been handed to her from above and
doing the Lord's work because of his
extreme devoutness some would say two
devout Claudel was accused of
anti-semitism and he had to really bend
over backwards in World War two to
convince the French that he was on their
side and not on the side of the Nazis
but when this work this oratorio
premiered in neutral Switzerland in
Basel in 1938 it was perceived as
something that was a call for peace and
what it is is the story of Joan of Arc
at the stake there's a prologue there 11
scenes and she looks back over her life
and narrates scenes from her life
she tells some of them we have an
actress doing it and famously in the
past was Ingrid Bergman and then Martha
Keller who did it with the New York
Philharmonic and now Marion Cotillard
you have the actress speaking certain
lines you have singers singing certain
music you have a chorus you have the
orchestra it is in its way multimedia
and if you think of it that way as you
listen to the performance you'll
discover that what we are perceiving or
Jones visions but rather than seeing
visions of the future their memories of
the past and what's so powerful about
this work and what Claudel and ha nagar
and Rubinstein understood was that at
this dramatic moment at the moment of
her death as the flames lick up as she
becomes very hot as she becomes fevered
and frenzied yes maybe she sees visions
again but she looks back over her life
and it makes for an incredibly powerful
very singular kind of work and in a way
that the New York Philharmonic can
present as theater as music as drama as
something much beyond
Joan of Arc was and is a person who
represents everything that we see to be
Noble whether we are religious whether
we are not religious whether we believe
in freedom for all whether we want and
want to emphasize self-assertion
self-identity she has something for
everyone and I know she'll have
something for you