Orchestra e Coro dell'Accademia Nazionale Di Santa Cecilia direttore Antonio Pappano

JEANNE D’ARC AU BUCHER

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12, 13, 14 Ottobre, ore 20.30

by Arthur Honegger

oratorio drammatico per soli coro e orchestra

(esecuzione in forma semiscenica)

In line with a consolidated tradition that started right from the early years of the Festival, Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia and Romaeuropa join forces for a special concert - a concert, having a strong emotional and spectacular impact and featuring innovative contents in terms of music, that acts as the perfect curtain raiser for the Santa Cecilia season.
On the podium there will be Antonio Pappano, the conductor who, thanks to an outstanding musical instinct, has become a favourite with the Rome public. Once again, Maestro Pappano has chosen to open the season with a 20^th century work, Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher (”Joan of Arc at the Stake”) by Arthur Honegger.
A score as unconventional today as it was in 1941 when it was performed for the first time. Relying on a powerful libretto by Paul Claudel, Honegger had no reverential fears in transferring to music cinema techniques, such as flashbacks, lap dissolves or editing.
A remarkable interpretation of the Maid was given in 1954 by Ingrid Bergman in a film directed by Roberto Rossellini who transferred to cinema his theatrical representation of Honegger’s oratory. The role that had been Ingrid Bergman’s will be played by Romane Bohringer, the famous French actress who hit the international limelight after winning the César Award for her performance in Cyril Collard’s Les nuits fauves (”Savage Nights”). Co-starring will be Tchèky Karyo, the Turkish-French actor whose prestigious career includes films such Nikita and Saving Grace and who is considered one of the most talented actors in the French stage world. The oratorio, presented with semi-stage setting, will be directed by Keith Warner, one of the truly big names in lyrical staging.
Jeanne d’Arc au bûcher will provide audiences in Rome an opportunity to discover a work that is part of the 20^th century modernist current that stands out for its expressive power - a composition rarely performed that is the expression of French 20^th century Catholicism: a religiosity animated more by doubts than by dogmas.

The Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia Orchestra was the first one in Italy to devote itself exclusively to the symphonic repertoire, promoting the premieres of important 20th century masterworks (including Fontane and Pini di Roma by Respighi). It has performed about 14,000 concerts, collaborating with the major musical figures of the century, and has been conducted by Mahler, Debussy, Strauss, Stravinsky, Hindemith, Toscanini, Furtwängler, De Sabata and Karajan, among others. From 1983 to 1990, Leonard Bernstein was its Honorary President. Following Myung-Whun Chung’s lengthy tenure as principal conductor from 1997 to 2005, Antonio Pappano took the helm as Music Director beginning in October 2005.