Odyssey Opera Continues its Trial by Fire Season: Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years’ War with Arthur Honegger’s Genre Defying Masterpiece Jeanne d’Arc

What: Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher by Arthur Honegger

When: Saturday, February 17, 2018, at 7:30 p.m.

Where: Sanders Theatre at Harvard University, 45 Quincy Street, Cambridge, MA T: Red to Harvard Square

Tickets: $25 and Up. To purchase, visit odysseyopera.org or call 617.826.1626.

Boston, MA (For Release 01.12.18) — One of the nation’s most innovative opera companies, Odyssey Opera, continues Trial by Fire: Joan of Arc and the Hundred Years’ War, a season-long exploration of operatic works inspired by martyr, saint, and military leader Joan of Arc (1412-1431). For one night only, Odyssey Opera presents a semi-staged English-language performance of Arthur Honegger’s dramatic oratorio Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake), a genre-defying masterpiece described as having the perfect cohesion between words and music. A hybrid of Honegger’s eclectic score and sung/spoken libretto by French poet/playwright Paul Claudel, Joan is brought to life in this vivid and emotional drama. Performing the lead role of Joan of Arc is acclaimed actor/dancer Shura Baryshnikov. Conductor Gil Rose leads a full orchestra and chorus featuring the Harvard-Radcliffe Collegium Musicum and the Premier Choir of the Boston Children’s Chorus.

Paul Claudel's dramatic text imagines the final moments of the martyr’s life and provides Honegger with space – between heaven and earth, past and present – where he mixes styles from the popular to the sublime. With colorful instrumentation including the ondes Martenot, his music is eclectic and inclusive, ranging from atonality to 1920s jazz, with military fanfares and Hollywood-like melodic sweeps punctuating the storyline throughout. 

“Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher defies categorization giving Honegger the freedom to explore a variety of stylistic means,” explains Gil Rose, Odyssey Opera’s Artistic and General Director. “Is it a theatrical production, an oratorio, an opera, a choral work? I believe it is all the above, and more.”

The two main characters, Joan herself and Brother Dominic, are played by actors. The drama takes place during Joan of Arc’s last minutes on the stake as she contemplates her fate and sees her life flash before her eyes. With her confessor Brother Dominic reading from the book of her life, we journey back to the heroine’s pastoral and carefree childhood to her trial and conviction. Audience members experience the martyr’s last moments through a striking combination of spoken word and music, with a range of musical mediums spanning from plain chant and folk song to shouting and jazz rhythms.

Joan of Arc’s presence both as a warrior and spiritual visionary sparked the beginnings of France’s rise as a great European power. Divine voices guided the 17-year old peasant girl to liberate the city of Orléans in 1429 and subsequently turn the tide for the French in the closing years of the Hundred Years’ War. Burned as a heretic in 1431, the Maid of Orléans was portrayed by her enemies as a witch, and a madwoman. She was later pardoned and eventually recognized as a saint by the Catholic Church. Today, she is a national hero of the French.

Representing a wide range of styles, Odyssey Opera presents five operas during the 2017-18 season inspired by Joan of Arc. Preceding Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher were Tchaikovsky’s The Maid of Orléans (September 16, 2017), L’assedio di Calais by Gaetano Donizetti (October 26 28, 2017), and The Trial at Rouen (December 1, 2017) by Norman Dello Joio, to be followed by Giovanna d’Arco (April 5 7, 2018) by Giuseppe Verdi.

About Odyssey Opera          

Founded in 2013 by artistic director/conductor Gil Rose, Odyssey Opera presents adventurous and eclectic works that affirm opera as a powerful expression of the human experience. Its world-class artists perform the operatic repertoire from its historic beginnings through lesser-known masterpieces to contemporary new works and commissions in varied formats and venues. Odyssey Opera sets standards of high musical and theatrical excellence and innovative programming to advance the operatic genre beyond the familiar and into undiscovered territory. Odyssey Opera takes its audience on a journey to places they’ve never been before. odysseyopera.org

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For more information, visit OdysseyOpera.org