Very pleased !
Yep, if you want a d'arco, this is the one to get. Caballé is superb and Levine can't be better! You can't go wrong with this one... Get it !

One of Veardi's best
An amazing opera with so many great melodies. A surprise it is not more often performed

Great Singers, not-Great Verdi
Most of the reviewers here have been kind to this recording, pointing out the singing of the three pricipals and Levine's conducting. No argument on these. But most have gone a bit overboard on the quality of Verdi's composition. It is, in all truth, very small potatoes for the man who wrote OTELLO, DON CARLO and FALSTAFF. Even the usually very astute Mr. Cantrell of Canada gives this more credit that is deserved. But we all know it's a matter of individual taste as well as objective quality.

I'd suggest thrift if you want to try out this opera and go with the Opera d'Oro version with Tebaldi. She's as good as Caballe (it was a frequently performed role in her early years) and the sound is quite OK. Then, if you feel you need a starrier cast and better sound, go to this one.

Verdi the patriot
Giovanna d'Arco is an average opera compared with the rest of Verdi's works. I'm glad someone recorded it as it is rarely performed. Caballe is excellent in the title role. I think recording is the best because, as others have already noted, the sound quality is horrible in the Tebaldi versions. It's interesting to see how Verdi's music was developing at this time. The opera was a success, due largely to its themes and the Italian people's nationalistic feelings towards the Austrian presence within their own country. Verdi had used his music to inspire this movement and inspire Italian unity, which would come but not for many years later. Is it just me or does "Ai Lari!...Alla Patria!" sound vaguely similar to the main motif of the Dies Irae of his famous Requiem many years later? Perhaps he was drawing some inspiration for his later works from these early works.

Good music. Libretto by baboons
Source: Analog studio recording from 1973, digitally remastered in 1998.

Cast: Giovanna d'Arco - Montserrat Caballe; Carlo VII, Re di Francia - Placido Domingo; Giacomo d'Arco - Sherrill Milnes; Lord Talbot - Robert Lloyd; Dilil - Keith Erwen. Conductor - James Levine, with the London Symphony Orchestra and the Ambrosian Opera Chorus.

Format: Disk 1: Prologue and Act I, 71:22. Disk 2: Acts II and III, 49:28.

Documentation: Libretto in Italian, French, German and English. Brief and perfunctory history of the opera. Track listing with timings.

"Giovanna d'Arco" was Verdi's seventh opera. In the years that followed his huge success with "Nabucco," Verdi wrote to the order of impresarios and publishers--and he did it primarily for the money. Later in life, he came to loathe this period and the working conditions imposed on him. He described it as his "years in the galley." Even so, he managed to grind out more good operas than clunkers. "Giovanna d'Arco" was one of the more successful. It was produced between "I due Foscari" and "Alzira," two of the clunkers. Verdi was writing on tight schedules and setting librettos churned out by writers whom it is overpraising to call hacks. If ever a libretto was written by baboons, it was this one. I'm not sure whether the baboon-in-chief was Schiller, on whose play "Die Jungfrau von Orleans" it was loosely based, or Temistocle Solera, who cast it into Italian doggerel. There is certainly blame enough to share.

Verdi, a hard-headed and canny peasant from Busetto, could count "Giovanna" as a success as measured by that most objective of judges, the box office. Its financial success in Italy and elsewhere was due solely to Verdi's music. Even in its first run, the libretto of "Giovanna D'Arco" was a problem. It blatantly contradicted both the facts and the popular legend of the young woman who always called herself Jehanne la pucelle (Joan the Maiden).

In the opera, Giovanna encounters the despairing Charles VII of France, bucks him up and sets off to drive back English invaders. Having won great successes on the battlefield, Giovanna is rapturously acclaimed by the French. Charles, of course, has fallen for the warrior-girl. He offers his love. The English, having lost Orleans, are in disarray. Up pops Giovanna's beloved father, who has convinced himself that his daughter has sold herself to the devil to win the love of the king. In an aria, "Franco son io," that surely would have earned a seal of approval from the Vichy government, Giacomo tells the English invaders that he is a patriotic Frenchman who would die for his country and its honor, therefore he has come to betray his country, his king and his daughter to them. Later, he publicly advises his little girl to purge her soul of sin by allowing herself to be burnt at the stake. The people of France turn on Giovanna, thinking that her old Pa must surely have some inside dope. In the last act of the opera, Giovanna is a prisoner in the English camp, chained to a rock, awaiting her fate. Her father, that patriotic Frenchman, happens to be strolling around in enemy territory and he overhears her prayers. Moved by her obvious piety, he decides that he has made a mistake. He releases her. She rides off into yet another battle. She is successful but mortally wounded. She expires in the finale, to the grief of all--excepting the local troop of frustrated devils, of course--especially of the king and her dear old Dad.

If you manage somehow to push aside the idea that it is supposed to have something to do with the historical Joan of Arc, "Giovanna" is a highly enjoyable pot-boiler, full of crackling, good tunes and rousing, lively choruses. Even a gang of devils has its own charming little dance tune. When he wrote "Giovanna," Verdi was still adhering to traditional operatic forms and walking in the well-trodden paths of Donizetti and Bellini. Already, though, he had replaced their elaborately decorated melodies with a raw power unknown to the older masters. In his years in the galley, Verdi developed the tools of greatness but he still awaited a librettist who would provide him with characters into whom he could breathe life, a Rigoletto, a Violetta or an Azucena.

This recording, to the best of my knowledge, is the only one currently available that offers more or less modern sound. Caballe, Domingo and Milnes are all justly acclaimed singers and all are in good voice. James Levine's hard-charging conducting is appropriate for the opera. The orchestra and the chorus are excellent. These things fully justify a five-star rating.

That said, I feel obliged to point out that Caballe, with all her undoubted and splendid virtues, just isn't a Joan of Arc. There is not a thing in her lovely voice to make men imitate the action of the tiger, to stiffen the sinews, summon up the blood, to disguise fair nature with hard-favour'd rage. And Domingo--wonderful voice, tremendous singer, no doubt about it--but he's not very apt to get at the heart and soul of a character. He's an amiable, one-size-fits-all sort of guy.

Amazon has two other sets of "Giovanna d'Arco." Both offer sound quality that is inadequate. (Audiophiles would more likely say they are abominable.) Both star Renata Tebaldi, who is a Joan of Arc to the very core. Tebaldi performed the part many times in the early days of her career. Her Giovanna is all down-and-dirty, big-time Italian diva singing. Even for Tebaldi, it is impressive. Read the other Amazon reviews and you will find that even those who rate this opera highly, tend to do so with an implied ho-hum. Tebaldi shows why there were likely to be riots in the streets of Austrian-occupied Italy after a performance! On one of the recordings, Tebaldi is teamed with the young Carlo Bergonzi, who had just moved up from baritone to tenor. There is still a baritonal darkness in his voice, but all the ring and power that anyone could want. On the other set, Tebaldi's Carlo VII is the sadly under-recorded Gino Penna. Neither tenor needs to take a back seat to Domingo in sound and both offer far more impressive characterizations.

By all means purchase this fine 1973 recording, but make an inexpensive investment in Tebaldi's Giovanna as a second set to discover what the opera is all about.