From its very first chords, Buxton Festival’s Giovanna d’Arco had the shivers rolling down my spine. The curtain lifts on asymmetrical slanting black surfaces, glossy as a grand piano, forming a corner at the heart of the stage. In its apex, Giovanna huddles, charmed and terrified at turns by the visions we hear depicted in Verdi’s overture. This early opera may lack the subtle humanity of Verdi’s more mature works, but its psychological intensity is its finest feature. Russell Craig’s slickly minimalist set is designed to call up a psychologically concentrated space, focusing our attention on the predicament of each character in turn. They are each trapped in their roles: Giovanna, the sublime mystic who must therefore deny herself earthly love (for Carlo); Carlo, the king, whose power cannot give him the only thing he truly desires (Giovanna); and Giacomo, the jealous father whose suspicion of his daughter blinds him to her true merit until it is too late (convinced Giovanna has given her life not to angels, but to demons). Director Elijah Moshinsky wields this trio with skill, allowing us to feel the doomed love between Giovanna and Carlo, and bringing out Giacomo’s despair, although the father-daughter bond seems to have more duty than passion in it for Giovanna.
Costumes meld medieval tunics and sashes (emblazoned with fleurs-de-lys on a blue ground for the French, lions on a red ground for the English) with First World War clothing, both military and civilian, indicating the universality of war. This looks smoother on stage than it might sound: a medieval silhouette is achieved for the female chorus by the use of snoods, which in their chunky knitted form also look like wartime make-do-and-mend, while some soldiers have their sashes spray-painted onto quilted period flying jackets. Lighting by Malcolm Rippeth, alongside imaginative visual projections, give us a beautiful sense of windswept clouds, fierce storms, red skies and moonlit woods. Physical locations are announced on the side-titles, allowing us to keep track of whether we are in the forest, in Reims, or in prison.
The Northern Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Stuart Stratford, made a spectacular sound all night: my spine didn’t stop tingling. Verdi plays mercilessly with our moods in Giovanna d’Arco, interleaving some of his most menacing dark lines with delicate pastoral melodies to illustrate the choice that faces Giovanna: the happy, fulfilled life of a country girl, or the glorious and painful destiny to which the angels (dressed as nuns and appearing above the black screens) call her in tones of unearthly purity. Meanwhile, some gleefully devilish demons, masked and dressed in red, act out the carnal pleasures she rejects to some fiendishly good Italian barrel music.