Verdi’s Giovanna d’Arco should come with some sort of ‘surgeon general’s warning’ before anyone hears a note. The real-life Joan of Arc was slow to be recognised as a saint and was still 75 years away from full canonisation when this operatisation of her story was premiered at La Scala in 1845.

That partly explains why this respectable early Verdi opera hasn’t enjoyed a fraction of the mileage of Ernani (two operas before this). One is always ready to look past the operatic formulas that the composer was slowly casting off from one year to the next but his treatment of this now-sacred subject can seem particularly cavalier in light of Joan’s post-canonisation iconography in films (Carl Theodor Dreyer), plays (GB Shaw) and oratorios (Arthur Honegger). Joan of Arc must have been more like a folk legend in Verdi’s time, which freed the composer and librettist Temistocle Solera to have Joan and soon-to-be-King Charles struggle with romantic impulses. And Joan’s death isn’t anything like as non-negotiable as burning at the stake. She’s wounded in battle and thus able to sing a long death-and-transfiguration scene. Along the way in this score, previous operas are recalled (the ensembles from Ernani) and future works are anticipated (the stormy night music in Rigoletto). Verdi was also striving for thematic integration in the score, though the themes may not be ones you much care about.

Compelling moments are numerous enough to warrant revivals of this opera, though it has an unusually high incidence (by early-Verdi standards) of hastily considered dramatic choices. That’s a nice way of saying that whenever Verdi seems not to have known what to do, he wrote something attractive and lilting. Though Joan doesn’t have a mad scene – her progression towards sainthood was far enough along to stave off that bel canto tradition – the fact that she hears voices inaudible to everyone else allows Verdi to touch that base. Given his taste for dark undercurrents, Verdi had Joan hearing demons as well, and in one scene characterises them as folksy voices tempting her into domestic obscurity. Less subtly, they battle for her soul against heavenly voices in some strong ensemble scenes. Act 3 begins arrestingly with stark battle drums; Joan, who is in chains at that point, sings a series of fractured, pungent yet lyrical vocal lines.

As is always the case with operas this uneven, the piece is unusually performance-sensitive – another reason why this live recording from the Wrocπaw Opera is the first Giovanna d’Arco in years. Among the existing ones, the 1972 Levine recording on EMI leaves little to be desired, with Montserrat Caballé in her prime delivering the role’s dramatic weight and having her coloratura technique released rather than challenged by more ornate moments. In the 1990 Warner video conducted by Riccardo Chailly with a cast led by Renato Bruson and Susan Dunn, stage director Werner Herzog has Joan picturesquely laid out in the final scene with a winding sheet that seems to fan out into eternity (stylised, but hardly offensive compared with the modern Regietheater).

Yet there’s a place for this rough-and-ready newcomer from Poland. One could argue that this opera doesn’t want to be fancified – particularly after hearing this earnest attempt to make the piece work on its own earthy terms. Conductor Ewa Michnik has a sure sense of pacing and goes some distance to create the right kind of dramatic inference in the score’s less convincing moments. None of the voices are traditionally pretty but the conviction behind them is palpable. Not everybody will take to the occasionally wide vibrato in Anna Lichorowicz’s voice but she lightens it beautifully for Joan’s early, less worldly scenes and has no lack of dramatic punch later on. Tenor Nikolay Dorozhkin has a graininess that’s not unattractive and seems a bit more real that the creamier Plácido Domingo on EMI. Mariusz Godlewski as Giacomo (Joan’s father) easily survives comparisons with Chailly’s Bruson. If there’s one significant element missing, though, it’s the kind of engineering transparency in the EMI recording that clearly reveals everything happening in the ensemble scenes in ways that this live recording (which is clear but dry and one-dimensional) rarely can.