LA-based experimental songwriter Julia Holter will score a screening of the classic 1920s silent film The Passion of Joan Arc in the latest commission from Opera North.
An audacious follow-up to last year’s score of Salome by Circuit des Yeux, Holter’s three-piece band will be joined by the Opera North’s 36-strong Chorus for two premiere events at Leeds Town Hall on 24 June 2020 and the Barbican in London on 26 June. The new score has been developed out of a 2017 live soundtrack that Holter performed alongside a screening of the film in Los Angeles.
Opera North is England’s national opera company in the North and one of Europe’s leading arts organisations. Opera North is a vibrant, lively organisation which actively challenges conventional perceptions of opera.
Ethereal soundscapes to meet one of cinema’s most intense portraits
Holter has long been allured to the outer reaches of cinema, citing the works of Alain Resnais, Andrei Tarkovsky and Lars von Trier as having influenced her enigmatic and dreamy soundscapes. Carl Theodor Dreyer’s visionary depiction of the martyrdom of the French saint has become one of the most influential films of its time and it was ranked ninth in the top 50 films of all time in the BFI’s Sight and Sound magazine poll in 2012.
Deyer’s masterpiece is renowned for Renée Jeanne Falconetti’s spectacular performance in the lead role, framed by myriad camera angles with her gaunt face often focus of long close-up shots. The critic Pauline Kael wrote that Falconetti’s portrayal “may be the finest performance ever recorded on film”.
Upon the announcement of next year’s shows, Holter said: “I’m honoured to be working with the Chorus of Opera North to perform my score to Carl Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. I’ll be adapting a couple of relevant medieval chants for the ensemble, to take the melodies to a wild place that reflects the rapture and trauma of Falconetti’s Joan, with the help of bells, organ, and other instruments.”
Holter’s five studio albums have often played upon experimental vocal production and unorthodox song structures. Luscious with melody, her ethereal soundscapes are an intriguing choice for a film that is renowned for its psychological, almost solipsistic intensity.
For more details and to book, visit https://www.operanorth.co.uk/whats-on/julia-holter-passion-of-joan-of-arc/