Giving Voice to a Saint

Timing is everything.

In the case of Richard Einhorn’s “Voices of Light,” an oratorio set to Carl Theodor Dreyer’s 1928 silent film “The Passion of Joan of Arc,” the dictum applies at least doubly. First, it’s pertinent to the synchronization of Einhorn’s music to scenes in the film and, in a larger sense, to the appearance of his project on the music scene itself.

The project’s appearance locally, sponsored by the Philharmonic Society of Orange County, takes place Thursday and Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.

This work about a Roman Catholic saint from France, by a composer from New Jersey who was inspired by early sacred music and the writings of medieval female mystics, arrived last year at a time of renewed interest in both genres, not to mention in silent films. In that regard, Einhorn’s project couldn’t be more politically correct, right?

“Them’s fighting words,” Einhorn said, laughing, in a phone interview last week from his home in New York. “If you can believe it, nobody has ever asked me about the political correctness before. People have skirted around the issue, afraid to ask directly. I’m delighted. I’ve been waiting.”

We’ll just put a big fermata on musical questions for now.

“The whole point of my piece is that a religious symbol, Joan of Arc, has been co-opted for political reasons,” said Einhorn, noting that her beliefs and actions have been subject to an astonishing variety of interpretations.

“There’s a lot that feminists will enjoy--in the United States, Joan is a left-wing feminist icon. But in France, she’s a symbol of right-wing nationalism. She’s also a Catholic saint. And I’ve met witches who adore Joan of Arc. She’s a perfect example of a symbol that has been taken over by groups for their own political gains. In fact, she’s a universal symbol.”

The West Coast premiere of “Voices of Light” was last year in Los Angeles with Lucinda Carver conducting, I Cantori as the collective voice of Joan, an ad hoc orchestra and a British Film Institute print of the film described at the time as “pristine.”

Audiences this week will see a print that’s said to be in even better condition. Further, a more seasoned Carver is coming off performances of “Voices of Light” at Brooklyn Academy of Music’s New Wave Festival and with the National Symphony at Wolf Trap outside Washington, D.C., and will be conducting her own Los Angeles Mozart Orchestra. Anonymous 4, featured on the Sony Classics recording of “Voices of Light,” sings the part of Joan.

Some background: “The Passion of Joan of Arc” is widely considered one of the greatest films of all time and features one of the greatest performances by an actor, that of 51-year-old Maria Falconetti as the 19-year-old Joan of Arc. A few months after its premiere, virtually all prints were destroyed in a warehouse fire; the director’s painstaking reconstruction from outtake footage was lost in a second fire.

Corrupt prints survived, but the film as Dreyer intended it remained lost until 1981, when an original print, with Danish intertitles, turned up in a janitor’s closet in a Norwegian mental institution. Safety copies were struck, one of which made its way to the British Film Institute and was used for the Los Angeles and New York premieres of “Voices” last year. Gaumont, a Paris-based film distribution firm, also obtained a copy and inserted French and English intertitles; it screened with “Voices of Light” Aug. 2 at Wolf Trap.

Working from an original negative, and just in time for the Costa Mesa performances, Gaumont struck a print that removed minor flaws.

“The new print is a far, far better print,” Einhorn, 44, said. “It’s a virgin print, never been shown before. Just got it three days ago. Really, really crisp and beautiful.”

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Anonymous 4--Johanna Rose, Marsha Genensky, Ruth Cunningham and Susan Hellauer--has had to worry about synchronization only once, at Wolf Trap. At the time of the recording, the singers had never seen the film. The CD, with the Netherlands Radio Philharmonic led by Steven Mercurio, is a concert version, not synced.

That hardly made the women’s “Voices of Light” experience, in which they portray the voice of Joan of Arc, less extraordinary:

“We were one person,” said Genensky by phone from New York, where the early-music ensemble is currently in residence at a church. “Four heads, one voice.

“It’s also an entirely new experience to be involved in a project by a living composer--quite amazing to be able to interact--and by a composer who has a name. Most music we do was never signed.”

The Pacific Palisades native read a biography of Joan of Arc around the time of the recording sessions.

“One of the most telling features of that depiction is this lone person against 130 interrogators, her alone, with no champion, no defense lawyer, no defender at all,” Genensky said. “It feels that way when we sing the voice of Joan.”

Anonymous 4 has commissioned a new piece from Einhorn; the search for text is underway.

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Einhorn also seeks new incarnations for “Voices of Light.”

Said Einhorn: “Basically the piece is a stand-alone oratorio. . . . We’ve got one place interested in performing it without any visuals, and I’m very actively looking for anybody interested in staging it in a completely different way.

“The music is inspired by the film, but it’s not, by any measure I can think of, a film score. I guess this is a silent movie event, but it’s more than that. Calling ‘The Passion of Joan of Arc’ a silent movie is like calling ‘Hamlet’ a nice play. It kind of misses the fact that [the film] is one of the great works of art of the 20th century.”

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If “Voices of Light” defies easy categorization, so does its subject.

Einhorn pointed out that Joan of Arc was an illiterate teenage peasant who led an army, a transvestite witch who became a saint and a devout Christian whose closest companions were brutal soldiers such as the Bastard of Orleans and Bluebeard (Gilles de Rais), who was burned at the stake for the serial murders of young boys.

“The part of Joan I love the most is the part of her that simply and practically went about her mission in the most single-minded way. That and her incredible heroism. Joan would say, ‘I hear my voices; I’ve got to go save France, goodbye.’ She had no pretense.

“She can’t totally be a feminist icon, because [she engaged in] so much violence and nationalism. She can’t be a nationalist icon, because there is so much about her nationalism that is misguided. What she is is a hero, a larger-than-life figure with her own greatness and her own flaws. . . . Few women in the West fit that mold the way she does.”

* The Philharmonic Society of Orange County presents Richard Einhorn’s “Voices of Light: The Passion of Joan of Arc” on Thursday and Friday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center, 600 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa. 8 p.m. $10-$48. Lecture by composer Richard Einhorn and film critic Charles Champlin at 7 p.m. (714) 740-7878. Also Saturday at 8 p.m. and Sunday at 4 p.m. at Veterans Wadsworth Theatre, Veterans Administration, Sepulveda at Wilshire, Westwood. $9-$33. (714) 740-7878.