2CD + libretto

When in December 1844 Giuseppe Verdi began work on Giovanna d'Arco, he was 31 and had already tasted the glory and the bitterness of fame. Two years earlier his Nabucco had carried off an amazing success, and from then on theatre directors and audiences expected new and wonderful operas from him. Giovanna d'Arco was written in a hurry, Verdi devoted a mere three months to the opera, which was staged at La Scala in Milan on 2 February, 1845. The tempo forced Verdi to use tried and tested methods, and anyway he was not ready just yet to break with operatic convention. However he would be within a few years, starting with Macbeth, but some of his ideas were already germinating, noticeably so in the story of the Maid of Orleans.