Word: joans
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1940-1949
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Arthur Honegger had successfully set to music everything from Greek legends (Antigone) to steam engines (Pacific 231) and sports (Rugby). Then he bit off a chunk that many a musical better-Verdi, Gounod and Tchaikovsky, among others-had broken a tooth on. He began work on an oratorio on Joan of Arc. French Poet (and onetime Ambassador to the U.S.) Paul Claudel provided a mystical, introspective text...
...considerable dent in the New York Philharmonic-Symphony's budget. Besides an augmented orchestra, it employed the 185-voice Westminster Choir and a group of soloists which included Metropolitan Opera Sopranos Nadine Conner and Jarmila Novotna, and two actors-Ballerina Vera Zorina, dressed in a white gown, as Joan, and Raymond Gerome (in tails) as Brother Dominic...
...windmill school, lifted his baton and the cellos rumbled out a dark and ominous theme. Poet Claudel had first tied his heroine to the stake, then let her mind wander through agonizing flashbacks: memories of the coarse yells of the mob, a howling dog, rolling drums. Standout scene: Joan's trial. Claudel and Honegger make her judges animals, with Porcus, a pig, presiding. Porcus (dramatically sung by Tenor Joseph Laderoute) screams his charges and denunciations, and the chorus howls "Hérétique! . . . Sorcière!" Joan finally dies in a flaming burst of music from chorus...
Honegger's Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher (Joan of Arc at the Stake) was highly effective as theater, if not always exciting as music (sometimes the score sounded like background for a Norman Corwin radio thriller...
...drama and for characterization could have saved it from obvious artificiality. No such talent is in evidence; nor has Producer David O. Selznick improved matters in his screen play. The only characters who come sharply to life are the barrister's wife (Ann Todd) and her confidante (Joan Tetzel); some of the others are acted with solid skill (by Charles Laughton, Charles Coburn, Ethel Barrymore), but they remain lay figures-interested but lifeless participants in a rigid, theatrical dance...