Find classical music concert, opera, ballet and dance reviews | Jeanne d'Arc au bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake), H99

Boston's Odyssey Opera performs a rarity: Arthur Honegger's Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher, a dramatic oratorio inspired by medieval mystery plays. 

  With a new and revolutionary staging by Romeo Castellucci, Lyon Opera presents a radical analysis of a symbolic figure often subject to ideological takeover; Kazushi Ono’s sympathetic direction makes Arthur Honegger and Paul Claudel’s work into something sublime while preserving its mysterious spirituality.

Academy Award-winning actor Marion Cotillard's portrayal of Honegger's Joan of Arc was curious, exultant, yet unflinching. 

Joan of Arc endures even today as one of history’s most obsessed-about martyrs. It’s no wonder when you consider that her story is of such uniqueness and potency: a poor, low-born French villager submerged in a war-battered France; it was the Hundred Years’ War, and as a child she witnessed several raids, both military and outlaw, and on one occasion saw her village burned.

The short life and terrifying death of Joan of Arc are the subject of Arthur Honegger’s Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher ("Joan of Arc at the Stake"), a curious masterpiece of an oratorio dating from 1938. The nearly-forgotten work received a well-deserved resurrection by Marin Alsop and the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Saturday night.

Pour cette œuvre si particulière, la salle de la Halle aux Grains était poussée dans ses retranchements physiques, ouvrant l’arrière-scène, son balcon, et la fosse à orchestre afin d’accueillir presque deux cents musiciens.