Marion Cotillard appears in a Dantesque setting, with a groundbreaking staging and a tone that refers to the cruelty of Passolini, the nudity of Dreyer and the complexity of Bergman. The dramatic oratorio Joan of Arc at the stakethe new bet of the Teatro Real in co-production with the Frankfurt Opera, It is an opera that is so reminiscent of the cinema, that it makes one think that the cinema had never been so operatic. And it is that this piece, which can still be enjoyed in Madrid until June 17, has been linked to cinema since its own birth.
Joan of Arc at the stake It had been born as an original commission from Ida Rubinstein, that iconic Russian ballet diva, who in addition to being an actress, patron and provocative figure, came to perform a full nude on stage in her interpretation of the dance of the seven veils in Salome. It was Rubinstein, precisely, who would play the central character of the work until the mid-1940s.
The orchestral version of the piece had been premiered in 1938, at the gates of World War II, being composed by the heterodox Swiss author Arthur Honegger. Honegger had already marked distances with his contemporaries by incorporating the avant-garde into his previous pieces King David (1921), Judith (1926), Antigone (1927) and L’Aiglon (1937), perhaps because Honegger, who perceived opera as a total art whose future inevitably implied its link with cinema.
The libretto of JorAna de Arco at the stake It was signed by the poet Paul Claudel, who narrated in eleven scenes the purgatory of Juana until her execution. When Honegger incorporated his perspective, it gave rise to what has been called a ‘stage poem’, which includes, for example, 20th-century eclecticism, notes of jazz, folklore, notes of farce, and even a circus tone.
In December 1954, an exultant Ingrid Bergman appeared before the media in our country to announce her most recent project: she would be the protagonist of the opera Joan of Arc at the stake. Next to her, the reporters portrayed her husband Roberto Rossellini, a filmmaker with whom she had been married for four years and who would also be the stage director of the performance. The space in which the unique work would be premiered would be the Teatro del Liceo in Barcelona, joining the expectation generated by the event, the desire to glimpse the modernity that an opera as current as it is iconoclastic.
Its configuration is profoundly eloquent. His celestial characters are performed by lyrical singers, whose voices appeal to humans, played by professional actors. For this reason, the main characters have always been actors instead of singers, since this formal distinction is essential to understand their metaphysical depth. In this regard, it should be remembered that in 2003 this work was carried out with Aitana Sánchez-Gijón and Darío Grandinetti in the main roles (Joan of Arc and the Dominican Father, respectively), in a lyrical performance conducted by Josep Pons.
Today, the public in the capital can enjoy the extraordinary stage direction of Àlex Ollé, from La Fura dels Baus, who knocked us out years ago with his impressive Splendor at the Royal Theatre. The scenes of terror starring the common people, Juana’s emotional desolation, the metaphorical representation of power and the most primary drives (eloquent and correct inclusion of phallic prostheses symbolizing the corruption of the exalted in the hands of the mundane), give account of a world in which it is worth reflecting on what kind of society we are configuring.
And, of course, there is Marion Cotillard, the French Oscar-winning actress who plays a role tailored to her, in which her candor, her spirituality and her sweetness contrast with a sick and corrupt world in which the one who earns the most has more, and in which the one who loses the most is worth more.
Directed by Juanjo Mena, Joan of Arc at the stake It is a sublime work full of tension, in which, once again, the words glossed by Shakespeare become true: “Heretic is not the one who burns at the stake. Heretic is the one who turns it on”.
And the opera merged with the cinema: Joan of Arc at the stake