About the work
The Maid of Orleans is an opera in four acts by Pyotr Tchaikovsky after Friedrich Schiller's tragedy of the same name, in Vasily Zhukovsky's Russian translation. The composer compiled the libretto himself, adding material from Auguste Mermet's opera “Jeanne d'Arc” and a play by Jules Barbier. It premiered on 25 February 1881 at the Mariinsky Theatre in St Petersburg.
Plot
Joan of Arc gives up marriage to follow her divine calling and leads the French army to victory over the English. Her forbidden love for the knight Lionel makes her doubt her mission; at the coronation she is publicly accused of betraying her calling, captured and ultimately executed by the English.
Cultural significance
Just two weeks after the premiere, Tsar Alexander II was assassinated, which initially hampered the opera's wider circulation. Despite staging Tchaikovsky himself called “poverty-stricken” and cuts forced by the overtaxed soprano Mariya Kamenskaya, the work's 1882 Prague production made it the first of his operas performed outside Russia.