FRANCIS POULENC (1899-1963):
LES DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES

Synopsis

The opera takes place in Paris and Compiegne, 1789-94, at the time of the French Revolution.

Act I:

Scene 1: The library of the Marquis de la Force. 1789.

The opera opens in a mood of great anxiety during the early days of the French Revolution. The Chevalier de la Force fears for his timid sister Blanche, who is easily frightened. He bursts into the library of his father, demanding "Where is Blanche"? A protesting crowd has held up her carriage on her way home from church services. In a breathless allegro expressing panic, the Chevalier's father, the Marquis, recalls the Royal Fireworks Panic in which he and his wife had been caught nineteen years earlier. His wife died giving birth to Blanche.

Both father and son worry about danger to Blanche. They know her as a sensitive girl who is so fearful of the world that she seems ill. The Chevalier is particularly worried about potential psychological harm. Blanche appears, seemingly composed although really terrified. The shifting and unrelated harmonies of her music betray her inner uncertainties. Afraid of the dark,

Blanche has always insisted on having candles. As a child, she used to say that every night she died, only to be reborn each morning. She makes a remark that puzzles both her father and brother, claiming that the only resurrection that has ever occurred is that of Christ's, at Easter, although for her every night is like Christ's Agony.

Suddenly, the shadow of a servant lighting the candles causes Blanche to panic and scream on her way to bed. She emerges to announce to her father and brother that she will enter the Carmelite Order and become a nun; the world is more than she can handle. She concludes her statement with "Avec votre permission, j'ai decide d'entrer au Carmel" ("with your permission, I have decided to enter the Carmelite Order"). Historically, the Carmelite order attracted women from the upper classes, eventually making it more susceptible to persecution during the Reign of Terror.

Scene 2: The parlor of the Carmelite convent.
Several weeks have passed, and Blanche is now in the convent. The Prioress, Mme. De Croissy, who is both old and infirm, sits before her. In a long and flowing arioso underpinned by the anxious rising minor 3rd that permeates the entire opera, the Prioress explains that the Carmelite Order is not a refuge. It is the nuns' duty to guard the Order, not the other way around. Although the rules of the Order are severe, it exists not for mortification of the flesh or the protection of virtue, but for prayer. God tests one's weakness, not one's strength. The music becomes more rapid and violent, suggesting that the encounter is more of an interrogation than a conversation. Suddenly, the music softens, moving from a brusque and accusatory outburst to lyrical and loving lines, when prayer is discussed. Blanche survives the ordeal, chooses the name Sister Blanche of the Agony of Christ, and receives the Prioress' blessing.

Scene 3: Inside the convent in a lower room.
An austere plainsong ritornello leads to a surprising scherzo as Sister Constance enters. She is the complete opposite of Blanche—i.e. a fun-loving and chatty peasant girl who can talk about life and death with the same levity with which she discusses convent chores. She shocks Blanche by revealing her premonition that both of them will die young and on the same day.

Scene 4: The infirmary at the convent.
The clamor of bells introduces the Prioress's death scene, one of the most realistic in all opera. Over a steady ostinato (i.e. continuously repeated musical phrase or rhythm), the Prioress veers from visionary calm to delirium and agony-induced profanity. Before she dies, the Prioress blesses Blanche and commits her to the care of Mother Marie. She dies in great pain, shouting in her delirium that in spite of her long years of service to God, He has abandoned her in the end: "Who am I at this moment, wretched as I am, to concern myself with Him! Let Him first concern Himself with me."  As Blanche and Mother Marie witness the death, both are visibly shaken. Blanche makes two appearances in this scene, once to receive the Prioress's blessing and again to witness her death.

An interesting aspect of this scene is the way in which Poulenc differentiated voices in an opera dominated by women. He based the tessituras (i.e. the area in a singer's range where the majority of the music lies) of his lead characters on grand operatic models. For example, Blanche's vocal line is based on the title role in Massenet's Thais. For the Old Prioress, Poulenc looked to Wagner's Kundry in Parsifal.

Act II:

Scene 1: The nuns' chapel.
The jagged music of terror interrupts the simple and moving requiem for the dead Prioress. Sisters Blanche and Constance are completing their watch over the body. When the clock strikes, Constance leaves to fetch the next pair of sisters. Left alone, Blanche panics and runs away. Mother Marie both admonishes and comforts her. Constance now voices her thoughts, central to Bernanos's theology – i.e. perhaps we die not for ourselves but for others. Perhaps we even die each other's deaths, so the Prioress' passing might afford a poor sinner an easy passing. Constance says: "Perhaps the Lord God gave her the wrong death, as a cloakroom attendant might give you the wrong coat."

Interlude:  Before the curtain.
Sisters Blanche and Constance bring flowers for the Mother Superior's grave. They discuss the ways of God, and Constance utters yet another strange and prophetic thought. She claims that the Mother Superior's death was too small for her. She predicts that someone else is likely to find an easier and more comfortable death. "People die for each other" or "in place of each other."

Scene 2: The chapter room.
In the opera's most extended arioso (i.e. vocal music that is more melodic than recitative, yet not quite an aria), the newly appointed Prioress Madame Lidoine warns the convent of the adversity ahead. Simple harmonies and rhythmic implacability emphasize her strength and humility. The scene ends with a moving "Ave Maria.".

Interlude
A ring at the door startles everyone. Mother Marie announces the arrival of a stranger. Blanche's brother, the Chevalier, has come. The Mother Superior allows the interview to take place, provided that Mother Marie can listen while unobserved.

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Highlights of the Opera

• Poulenc's interest in opera came late in his career. All three of his operas, Les mamelles de Tiresias (1947), Les Dialogues des Carmelites (1957) and La Voix humaine (1959), display a depth of feeling that Poulenc would probably have been unable to capture during his younger days.
• The story of the Compiegne Carmelites was first told by Mother Marie, a survivor of the French Revolution who lived until 1836 and included the story of the Carmelite nuns in her memoir. The publication of her Relation led to the beautification of the nuns in 1906. In 1931, a German novelist and Catholic convert named Gertrude von Le Fort turned the story into a novel called Die Letze am Schafott (The Last on the Scaffold), writing herself in as the fearful and struggling Blanche de la Force.
• There were numerous attempts to turn the novel into both a play and film. In 1947, the French Resistance fighter Father Bruckberger and cinematographer/screenwriter Philippe Agostini adapted the novel for the screen. They added a new character, Blanche's protective brother Chevalier de la Force. The two then engaged French novelist Georges Bernanos to write the dialogue. Bernanos added more characters and personal details. At the time he was suffering from cancer, and he set the age of the dying Prioress at 59, just like himself. The Prioress's crisis of faith as she lay dying was like his own. Although Bernanos's work never made it to the movies, it surfaced as a stage play after the novelist's death. Poulenc saw the play in the early 1950s and suggested to Casa Ricordi that he write an opera.
• Poulenc remained very true to the spirit and text of original source - unlike Debussy' with that composer's adaptation of the play Pelleas et Melisande. He made just a few cuts for length. In the inscription of the original score, Poulenc cites as sources of inspiration his mother, Claude Debussy, Claudio Monteverdi, Giuseppe Verdi, and Modest Moussorgsky. While Poulenc was composing the opera between 1953 and 1956, he suffered a nervous breakdown, presumably because he empathized so deeply with the nuns' plight. The death of Poulenc's partner Lucien Roubert in 1955 added to the composer's stress.
• After several years of legal and financial complications over the rights to the piece, Les Dialogues des Carmelites premiered at Teatro alla Scala (in Italian) in 1957. That same year, it was performed in Paris (in French), Cologne, and San Francisco (in English). The San Francisco performance was recorded and televised by NBC Opera Company. In 1957, the work won the opera award of the New York Music Critics' Circle. The opera was performed at Covent Garden in 1958. The first performance in the United States took place on March 3, 1966 at New York City Opera. The first production at the Metropolitan Opera, sung in English, took place in 1977. The 1980 Metropolitan Opera revision was sung in French. Met productions from then until 2013 were sung in English. Since 2013, Met productions have been sung in French. The 2023 Barrie Kosky production at the Glyndebourne Festival added yet another touch that was reminiscent of the Holocaust.
• The opera focuses on several themes: (1) inhibiting limitations of fear and the freedom achieved when overcoming it; (2) death; (3) personal terror vs. state terror; (4) restraint; (5) inner and outer turmoil; and (6) sacrifice.
• Poulenc uses three main musical forms in the opera: (1) choral and orchestral interlude; (2) recitative (words that are sung in a way that imitates speech); and (3) arioso (singing that is tied more to the rhythm of speech than an aria but that is more melodic than recitative). The many interludes bring the pieces together, creating a sense of continuity between disparate locations and time gaps.
• The musical technique combines both the influence of earlier composers such as Mussorgsky (Boris Godunov) Monteverdi (L'incoronazione di Poppea), Debussy (Pelleas et Melisande), and Verdi (Don Carlo) and Poulenc's unique way of blending these styles with his own. Even when Poulenc wrote for a large orchestra, he used full forces sparingly. He often scored for woodwinds, brass, or strings alone. Assisted by Bernac, he also demonstrated great skill in writing for the human voice, fitting the music to the tessitura (i.e. vocal range) of each character. By the time Poulenc wrote Les Dialogues des Carmelites, his last opera, he was comfortable giving the soprano stretches of music without any orchestral accompaniment at all.
• The compositional style of the opera is tonal and follows the rules set down by traditional Western music theory. Poulenc's music follows the melodic path that the ear expects. At the time of the opera's premiere in 1957, other contemporary composers such as Samuel Barber (Vanessa), Bohuslav Martinu (The Greek Passion), and Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story) were writing in the same lyrical, melodic way.
• The challenge for Poulenc was in dealing with a thin story line. Although the ending is melodramatic, there is no conventional love interest. As the title suggests, there is a great deal of dialogue of a religious nature. Although there are no set arias, the dialogue and its emotional overtones are heightened by the musical setting of the prose speech. The few set concert numbers, primarily Latin prayers, stand out as realistic and dramatic. One example is the "Ave Maria" in Act II, when the new Mother Superior finishes her first awkward yet moving address to the nuns. Another example comes at the end of the last act when the nuns mount the scaffold singing "Salve Regina." Their music weakens as the sound of the guillotine is heard off stage.
• Musically, there is a sharing of material throughout the opera. To Jeremy Sams, this approach is a musical analogue for Bernanos' s view of martyrdom: the transference of grace, the universality of suffering.