Riccardo Chailly opens Scala season with critical edition of Verdi’s "Giovanna d’Arco"
The 2015-2016 opera season at the Teatro alla Scala opens on December 7 with the critical edition of Giuseppe Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco, edited by Alberto Rizzuti. The Orchestra and Chorus of Milan’s famous theatre, under the baton of its principal conductor Riccardo Chailly, will present the first performance of this opera at La Scala in 150 years. Anna Netrebko will sing the title role while Carlo VII will be interpreted by Francesco Meli. The stage direction is by the Belgian directors Moshe Leiser and Patrice Caurier.
Giovanna d’Arco (libretto by Temistocle Solera partially based on the play by Friedrich von Schiller) was the fifth opera that Verdi wrote for the Teatro alla Scala. After the resounding successes achieved with Nabucco and I Lombardi alla prima crociata, expectations for the new work were very high. Premiered on February 15, 1845, the opera did not meet the success it deserved, despite the high praise Verdi received for an orchestration that proved much more refined than that of his previous operas. Nevertheless, Giovanna d’Arco remained in the repertory of Italian theatres for almost 25 years.
It was revived at the Scala twenty years after its premiere (in 1865), but subsequently it disappeared from Italian opera programs except for a small number of isolated revivals. Riccardo Chailly explains why the Teatro alla Scala is inaugurating its season with Giovanna d’Arco: ‘It’s wrong to place it in Verdi’s “prison years”. Giovanna is more of a bridging opera, which anticipates the masterpieces of the composer’s mature period. If it is performed rarely, it is because it demands enormous vocal effort.’
Photo: Decca, Gert Mothes