Word: joan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...time to protest British rule over the subcontinent, and she spent an intense, unhappy childhood prematurely immersed in the politics of rebellion. "I have no recollection of games, children's parties or playing with other children," she once said. "All my games were political ones-I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake...
...Saint Joan. Saintliness, like beauty, exists in the eye of the beholder. There are as many Joans as there are actresses who play her and audiences who see her. But what was Shaw's personal notion of Joan? Using his own inflective emphases, he describes her as a "protestant" and a "nation-alist." She protests against the authority of the church represented by the Archbishop of Rheims (Max Helpmann) in favor of the individual conscience. She subverts the authority of the lords temporal and their feudal privileges by proclaiming the supremacy of the nation-state. Her real visions, then...
...Joan escapes Shaw's didactic clutches, and that is why audiences love her. She is an imp of candor and a lioness in courage. She lacks all humor but makes up for it with backslapping bonhomie. Minutes after she has been ushered into the presence of the Dauphin, she is calling him "Charley...
...Galloway's Joan is casually approachable in precisely this way. What Galloway does not project is any hint of spirituality or vulnerability. Perhaps the din of forensic rhetoric that dominates this production prevents her from hearing any inner voices. Tom Kneebone makes of the Dauphin a mixture of skittish cravenness and caustic venom, while William Needles' inquisitor is magisterially forbidding. The rest of the cast act like shrill contenders in a debating contest, but that may stem in part from George Bernard Shaw the street-corner agitator...
...Symphony; James Levine, conductor; RCA, $6.98). There appears to be little that James Levine, 31, cannot do, except perhaps play Scott Joplin on the tuba. The remarkable new music director of the Metropolitan Opera already has several superlative operatic recordings to his credit (notably / Vespri Siciliani on RCA and Joan of Arc on Angel). This version of Mahler's Fourth, a genial pastoral masterpiece, has a flowing line rarely matched in current interpretations and an intimacy that, comes close to Bruno Walter's incomparable recording of the 1940s. The formidable Chicago Symphony sounds somewhat more relaxed than...