Szenen aus dem Leben der Heiligen Johanna (Jeanne D'Arc) is an opera in three acts by Walter Braunfels

Walter Braunfels

-Life:Walter Braunfels was born in Frankfurt am Main. His first music teacher was his mother, the great-niece of the composer Louis Spohr . He continued his piano studies in Frankfurt at the Hoch Conservatory with James Kwast....

 to a libretto by the composer.

Composition history

Braunfels began the composition after attending the premiere of Hindemith's Mathis der Maler in May 1938, and he had completed the opera by 1943. The libretto, written by the composer, is based on the actual French and Latin documents of the trial of Joan of Arc

Joan of Arc

Saint Joan of Arc, nicknamed "The Maid of Orléans" , is a national heroine of France and a Roman Catholic saint. A peasant girl born in eastern France who claimed divine guidance, she led the French army to several important victories during the Hundred Years' War, which paved the way for the...

 in their German translation (1935), there are also a few references to the play Saint Joan by George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw

George Bernard Shaw was an Irish playwright and a co-founder of the London School of Economics. Although his first profitable writing was music and literary criticism, in which capacity he wrote many highly articulate pieces of journalism, his main talent was for drama, and he wrote more than 60...

 and other 20th Century interpretations of Joan of Arc. The libretto produces many of Joan's naive statements verbatim from the trial documents.

Performance history

Despite Braunfels intense affection for the opera, as an expression of his Roman Catholic belief, he was unable to obtain a performance after the war. His student Fritzjof Haas recorded that Braunfels, six months before his death in 1953, expressed as his biggest disappointment of all his unheard compositions that he had never heard Joan performed. Following the reawakening in interest in Braunfels' work after Decca's recording of The Birds in 1996, the opera was finally first performed in Stockholm under the baton of Manfred Honeck

Manfred Honeck

Manfred Honeck is an Austrian conductor, the son of Otto and Frieda Honeck, from a family of nine children. One of his brothers is the Vienna Philharmonic leader Rainer Honeck....

 in 2001. The performance was recorded by Sveriges Radio

Sveriges Radio

Sveriges Radio AB – Swedish Radio Ltd – is Sweden's national publicly funded radio broadcaster. The Swedish public-broadcasting system is in many respects modelled after the one used in the United Kingdom, and Sveriges Radio - like Sveriges Television - shares many characteristics with...

 and in 2010 licensed to Decca and released on CD.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast 2001 (Conductor: Manfred Honeck Manfred Honeck Manfred Honeck is an Austrian conductor, the son of Otto and Frieda Honeck, from a family of nine children. One of his brothers is the Vienna Philharmonic leader Rainer Honeck.... )
Joan of Arc	soprano Soprano A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...	Juliane Banse Juliane Banse Juliane Banse is a German soprano and noted lieder singer. She received her vocal training at the Zürich Opera, and with Brigitte Fassbaender in Munich. She won First Prize in the singing competition of the Kulturforum in Munich in 1989. In 1989, she made her operatic debut as Pamina in Mozart's...
Gilles de Rais Gilles de Rais Gilles de Montmorency-Laval , Baron de Rais, was a Breton knight, a leader in the French army and a companion-in-arms of Joan of Arc. He is best known as a prolific serial killer of children...	baritone	Terje Stensvold
Georges de la Trémoille Georges de la Trémoille Georges de la Trémoille was count of de Guînes from 1398 to 1446 and Grand Chamberlain of France to King Charles VII of France. He sought reconciliation between Philip, Duke of Burgundy and Charles VII during their estrangement in the latter part of the Hundred Years' War...	baritone Baritone Baritone is a type of male singing voice that lies between the bass and tenor voices. It is the most common male voice. Originally from the Greek , meaning deep sounding, music for this voice is typically written in the range from the second F below middle C to the F above middle C Baritone (or...	Günter Missenhardt
Charles VII of France Charles VII of France Charles VII , called the Victorious or the Well-Served , was King of France from 1422 to his death, though he was initially opposed by Henry VI of England, whose Regent, the Duke of Bedford, ruled much of France including the capital, Paris...	tenor Tenor The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...	Gunnar Guðbjörnsson
Archangel Michael	tenor	Robert Künzli