Dialogues des Carmélites

On 17 July 1794, at the height of the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror, 16 Carmelite nuns were executed at the guillotine. The true story of a community of women who chose death rather than renounce their faith inspired a book, a play, a film and one of the most devastatingly powerful operas in the repertoire: Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. Premiered in 1957, the composer’s only full-length opera combines widescreen historical action with close-up psychological drama, following fearful novice Blanche de la Force as she enters the convent and struggles with an impossible question: would you die for what you believe? As the title suggests, Dialogues is a series of musical conversations, broken up by orchestral interludes—music that comments, anticipates and reacts, amplifying the more intimate sung exchanges into powerful wordless statements. The soundworld is cinematic, full of motifs and melodies, with a distinctive glow generated by a cast dominated by female voices: radiance layered on radiance. “You must forgive my Carmelites,” Poulenc wrote, wryly. “It seems they can only sing tonal music.” The opera’s final scene is its most famous—infamous even. As the nuns approach the scaffold they sing a Salve Regina. One by one the voices fall away, silenced by the brutal thud of the guillotine blade, until, at last, only Blanche remains.