Peter Greenaway directs Giovanna d’Arco

With more than 50 years of experience as film director Peter Greenaway combines the worlds of film and opera with an all new approach to Verdi’s work.

With more than 50 years of experience as film director, Peter Greenaway combines the worlds of film and opera at the annual Verdi Festival in Parma, demonstrating what magic those two can do together with an all new approach to Giuseppe Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco, staged and edited by the exceptional director himself and his wife, Saskia Boddeke.
With this spectacular production, recorded in 4K, Greenaway breathes new life into the Teatro Farnese, one of Italy’s oldest and most exceptional theater gems. He vividly fills the gigantic room with 3D projections, creating thrilling moments from the very beginning, when threads of light spread over the darkened arches during the overture, shaping the architecture and flooding the whole area with changing light patterns, to Giovanna’s last words in the atmosphere of ecstatic rapture and collective apotheosis. His staging and picture language is “perfectly fitting the quick changes in music and imagery, clashing battles and a grand sea of flames, finished with a captivating and poetical scene, when heaven opens its doors for the dying Giovanna.” (Kieler Nachrichten)
Parma’s Farnese Theatre with its delightful and splendid structure is fully built out of wood. It opened in 1618 and closed due to financial reasons in 1732, after being used just nine times for Farnese celebrations.

Production company Unitel