The verdicts more commonly encountered on Tchaikovsky's Orleanskaya Deva (The Maid of Orleans) are negative. It has been described variously as the dullest of the composer's operas and a bad opera with some good music. Yet, in the context of a Wexford Festival which also offers operas by Adolphe Adam and Riccardo Zandonai, it is, after all, a bad opera with good music by a great composer.
The conductor of the new Wexford production, Daniele Callegari, gives the very agreeable impression that he belongs to a rather more positive school, probably surpassing even the enthusiasm of Richard Taruskin's festival programme note, with its suggestion that the work "touches greatness" at its crowning moments.
Callegari's surge and thrust in the pit certainly draws passionate playing from the members of the NSO. And the Russian soprano Lada Biriucov as Joan of Arc is clear and resolute, with a saintly, sleepwalkerish certainty that deserts her only when Tchaikovsky demands more heft than she seems able to muster in her lower register. Otherwise she is a saintly visionary par excellence.
Tchaikovsky, who assembled his own libretto from a range of sources and wanted to create a work in the French style, derails his Joan in grandest operatic fashion with a quickly overpowering love interest in the form of the Burgundian knight, Lionel, the rather stiff Igor Tarassov. However, it's hardly Biriucov who's to be blamed for the less than convincing loss of her seer-like independence.
No one else quite catches fire as Biriucov's Joan does, although Andrei Antonov's Archbishop strikes the ear with resonant warmth, and Youri Alexeev's King Charles has an oddly effective petulance.
The director/designer, Massimo Gasparon, has created a set with a central, pillared dais that adapts well to much reconfiguration. His costumes, evoking 1930s Hollywood men-in-tights medievalism in mostly rich colours, are strikingly lit by Rupert Murray.
The Wexford Festival Opera Chorus, trained by Lubomir Matl, make their important contributions with strength and sensitivity.
