On Friday evening wife and I saw Poulenc’s opera, Dialogues of the Carmelites. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a performance before although it’s possible that I saw the 1957 television production broadcast by NBC. Yes, network television used to broadcast opera in prime time. How far we’ve come!
The work has received enormous critical acclaim (I’ve heard it called the greatest opera of the second half of the 20th century) so we were looking forward to the performance.
Poulenc’s 1957 opera is an opera based on a play based on a screenplay based on a novel based on a memoir written by the only Carmelite nun from a monastery in Picardy to escape execution during the French Revolution. The opera does not center on the events of the Revolution so much as on the internal struggles and characters of the nuns themselves. It’s a work virtually unique in the common repertory in that it does revolve around vengeance, anger, or love but around religious faith and nearly all of the major parts are for women.
Dialogues, structurally, is not based around recitative and set-piece arias but, like most 20th century operas, around continuous melody, in the case of Dialogues punctuated by several choral hymns. The second act Ave Maria is as beautiful a piece of sacred music as I’ve ever heard and its performance was as fine a performance of choral music by women as I’ve ever heard.
Poulenc’s work provides a remarkable showcase for women’s voices and the performances on Friday night were not disappointing. I found Felicity Palmer’s portrayal of Madame Poissy, the prioress, a particular standout but that’s not to slight the other performances. The entire cast was extremely balanced and there wasn’t a single weak performance.
The orchestra, as usual, somewhat overbalanced the singing.
The production was a minimalist one: bare stage, period costumes (mostly nuns’ habits), a few lighting effects. The final execution scene (pictured above) was done as a sort of interpretive dance: with each percussive swoosh from the orchestra—the sound of the guillotine—one of the nuns would fall to the ground.
I don’t think one can say that one enjoys a performance of Dialogue of the Carmelites so much as that one experiences it. It is overwhelmingly sad and, I think, conveys a sense of futility. There is no apotheosis, no triumph. I was left wondering what did it all mean? Perhaps it meant nothing. It was what it was. On July 16, 1794 sixteen Carmelite nuns were executed by the Revolution in Paris.
The season so far: Roméo et Juliette, Dialogues of the Carmelites, Salome, Turandot, Die Fledermaus, Iphigenie en Tauride, Il Trovatore. A tie between Roméo et Juliette and Dialogues of the Carmelites.
The music is, however, incredibly beautiful.
We are doing that Ave Maria as part of our spring choral concert. It’s spellbinding to stand in the middle of the choir and hear it.
What does it mean? The triumph of Good over evil, that evil may appear to triumph, but in the end, it will crumble and good will still be there.
And 300 years later, we still celbrate that “weak” women could by their courage triumph over the hatred of the mighty.
You see, the nuns were innocent, but willing to die rather than deny God. So the powerful were unable to win the moral “fight” against religion, and the mobs who saw the nuns die saw that lesson.
And the nuns offered their sufferings as a prayer for their country.
Within months of their deaths, the “revolution” was overturned and the persecution of innocents stopped.
It just crumbled, and the murderers lost power, just like the Berlin wall crumbled.