DVD ARTE 412918-1 [Released October, 2007; UK distributor Discovery] This great Dramatic Oratorio in Eleven Scenes, a key work of Arthur Honegger's, was important to me some fifty years ago, but Honegger's music is little performed in UK these days and it is long since I had heard Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher or the great La Danse des morts, also to a libretto by Paul Claudel. This was an inspired staged production at Montpellier and it has been faithfully transferred to DVD, with a generous illustrated discussion bonus Discovering an Opera, an hour long. The staging is economical but completely effective, the drama felt as inside Jeanne's bewildered mind. Claudel reviews her life in 11 scenes backwards; " - - the dying in their final hour see all the events of their life unfolding - - ". This from ARTE is a very classy production, certainly one of the very best DVDs reviewed in the last year or so. From the same source there is a collection of rare operas and oratorios on CD with L'Orchestre National de Montpellier which looks well worth investigating. Peter Grahame Woolf
photo de mediathequeguebwiller
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