Little Catholic girl who's fallen in love...right, so Joan of Arc, or whatever you want to call her: that's what this opera is about, by way of the Schiller tragedy. It seems to basically follow the story, albeit with a romance added to make things more opera-y. Joan is a peasant girl who's having visions, which historically had to have been some undiagnosed and at the time undiagnosable mental illness. Well anyway, she volunteers her military services; the idea that these were accepted is kind of unbelievable, but...well, it's what happened. The opera also has some stuff with the French nobility which feels a bit superfluous. Anyway, Joan has some military victories, and she meets this knight called Lionel, who was apparently a traitor to the French cause, it's not totally clear, but he and Joan fall in love kind of instantly and now he's a good guy again. I guess. But her dad thinks all of what she's doing comes from Satan (where did THAT come from?), and wants to stop her; also, the angels having stipulated that she can have military victory at the price of never getting laid (doesn't seem fair, but what can you do?), so they're super pissed off that she's now with this dude; it's really not made entirely clear, but the impression I got was that her ultimate burning at the state is some sort of divine punishment? Who can say?
So yeah, the libretto is a bit questionable. But fuckin' eh man, it's Tchaikovsky, one of my favorite composers, and he comes through as always. This one came right after Eugene Onegin, so why wouldn't it? There's really no good reason that this shouldn't be more performed. The production here is very much on the chintzy side, including one very dubious moment with plastic angels descending from the "heaven." But that's okay! You can still enjoy it, and I'm not sure if even the worst production would be able to fuck up the power of the climactic public burning. Please don't take that as a challenge, regietheater directors.
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