Dialogues des Carmélites: Poulenc’s Magnum Opus

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In May 11, 2019, the Met “Live in HD” will present this season’s revival of the company’s long-lived and beloved production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites. The design and direction were new in 1977 when the Met introduced Poulenc’s work into its repertoire. Forty-two years and eight revivals later, it is one of the company’s oldest extant productions and Dialogues the most often performed opera composed in the second half of the 20^th Century. 

Poulenc’s subject had a long, circuitous, and highly unusual genesis, originating in a tragic episode of the Reign of Terror related in a 19^th-century memoir by Mère Marie de l’Incarnation, a Carmelite nun who had survived the destruction of the her convent and the execution of its religious community during the French Revolution. The memoir served as the source for a 1931 novella, “The Last on the Scaffold,” by German author Gertud von Le Fort. In its turn, the novella inspired a film scenario for which the celebrated novelist, Georges Bernanos, was commissioned in 1947 to write the dialogue. His text was subsequently adapted for the theater. The play was first staged in Germany in 1951 and then in France in 1953. Urged by his publisher to undertake a project for which he had well-known deep affinities, Poulenc completed the libretto and score of Dialogues des Carmélites in 1955. The opera was premiered in 1957 at Milan’s La Scala in Italian, in accord with the composer’s dictate that the text be sung in the vernacular of the audience.

Dialogues des Carmélites traces the spiritual journey of Blanche de la Force (an invention of von Le Fort), a young aristocrat, from the eve of the French Revolution to the darkest days of the Terror. Act I defines the morbidly fearful Blanche as she determines to leave her ancestral home in search of refuge in a Carmelite convent. The Old Prioress of the religious order, the high-born Madame de Croissy, cautions Blanche that the convent is not a refuge but a house devoted to prayer. In the complete recording of the cast of the 1957 Opéra de Paris premiere, we hear Denise Duval as Blanche and Denise Scharley as Madame de Croissy. Duval created the leading soprano roles in Poulenc’s three operas, the last two, Dialogues des Carmélites and La Voix humaine composed specifically with her voice and artistry in mind. Although mezzo-soprano Scharley never sang in North America, she pursued an active European career. Her sensational Madame de Croissy is at once commanding in her declamation of the rigorous rule of the order and tender towards the fragile, new postulant.

 

At the close of Act I, Blanche is witness to the agony of the dying Madame de Croissy and to the blasphemous imprecations of the woman who had been for so many a model of piety.

  

In Act II, the New Prioress, Madame Lidoine, evokes her own humble birth as she exhorts the nuns to humility in the face of the imminent Terror. She exhorts them also to shun the temptation of martyrdom, a diversion from the duty of prayer. Régine Crespin, she too a member of the first Paris cast, renders the forthright message of her extended monologue with her characteristic creamy timbre.

In Act III, the New Prioress comforts the congregation, imprisoned in the Conciergerie while awaiting the guillotine. She assents to the collective vow of martyrdom, reminding her flock that, in the Garden of Olives, Christ himself knew the fear of death. The sumptuous voice of Jessye Norman fills that phrase with overwhelming feeling.

The opera’s finale enacts the execution of the Carmelites. They sing in a chorus of diminishing numbers the serene prayer, “Salve Regina,” punctuated by the brutal sound of the falling blade as one by one each goes to her death. At the very end, Blanche, who had escaped arrest, and whose fear of life and death runs through the narrative, joins her sisters as the last to ascend the scaffold and the last to be heard. The unforgettable emotional charge of the scene is realized through the unflinching depiction of the horrific event and the joy of spiritual transcendence that flows from the protagonist, finally free of her own terrors. This video is excerpted from a recent South American production.

Carmen: High and Low

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On February 11, 2017, the Metropolitan Opera will broadcast via radio its matinee of Carmen. Only Puccini’s La Bohème and Verdi’s Aïda surpass Carmen in number of Met performance, one thousand and counting. 

Bizet is, together with Ruggero Leoncavallo and Pietro Mascagni, one of only three composers of multiple operas to have just one of his many titles boast a place in the standard repertory, and so prominant a place to boot. Pagliacci ranks ninth; Cavalleria rusticana tenth. Other of the composers’ operas, Bizet’s Les Pêcheurs de perles, for example, or Mascagni’s L’Amico Fritz, or Leoncavallo’s Zazà make it to the bills of international houses only sporadically.

Carmen was performed by the Met during the company’s first season, 1883-1884, in Italian, and then in German until 1891. It did not come into its own, however, until the management saw its way to the original French and brought together a cast--Emma Calvé, Jean de Reszke, Emma Eames, and Jean Lassalle—described by the Times as “near to justifying the epithet ‘ideal.’” Calvé set what still stands as the single-season record for a singer in a single major role, thirty-one performances. Abandoning all restraint, the exigent New York critic, Henry Krehbiel, called hers “the most sensational triumph ever achieved by any opera or singer.” We hesitate to include a clip of Calvé’s Carmen here; the poor quality of early recordings does not do her voice justice. You can find a number of her arias on Youtube.

Until the 1930s the Met’s star sopranos, Calvé, Geraldine Farrar, Maria Jeritza, and Rosa Ponselle in turn, claimed Carmen for themselves. Occasionally a mezzo-soprano would have a go at the part. The role’s range accommodates both higher and lower voice types. The darker or lighter timbre is each congenial in different ways to the character’s shifting moods. In the 1940s, a mezzo-soprano, Risë Stevens, tilted the balance to the deeper voice. Photographed in ads for Camels and Chesterfields brandishing Carmen’s signature cigarette, occasionally cast in the movies and frequently heard on the radio, Stevens was one of the most widely recognized classical artists of the period. Since she first took on the role (she sang it 124 times for the Met, second only to Calvé), Carmen has belonged nearly exclusively to the mezzo.

Here are clips of two of Carmen’s arias, the “Habanera” and the “Gypsy Song.” The “Habanera” is sung first by American soprano Leontyne Price. This excerpt is drawn from a complete recording of the opera, her sole assumption of the role. For purposes of contrast, Price is followed by Russian mezzo-soprano Elena Obraztsova in a live performance at the Vienna State Opera. Price binds the notes of the music’s coiling phrases in a hypnotic, silvery legato. Obraztsova conveys the character’s humor and appeal in the warmth of her sound.

French soprano Régine Crespin’s “Gypsy Song” comes from a complete recording of the opera. Again, for purposes of contrast, American mezzo Maria Ewing is here excerpted from a live performance from Glyndebourne. Crespin foregrounds the elegance of Bizet’s music with a voice both sumptuous and finely focused. For Ewing, the aria is not a showpiece, but rather a fierce expression of Carmen’s independent nature. In this emphatic public moment, the mezzo succeeds in inviting us into her private thoughts.

Postscript

For eight seasons, beginning in 1914-1915, Geraldine Farrar sang sixty-five performances of Carmen, all but four of the company’s total in this period. Her charisma, beauty, and stagecraft led to a sustained Hollywood career, beginning with Cecil B. De Mille’s silent adaptation of Carmen. In her screen debut, Farrar exhibits the flashing dark eyes, the beguiling smile, the supple body, and the singularly uninhibited presence that defined her in the opera house. Alas, her movies predate the 1926 advent of the “talkies.” Here is a clip that weds the soprano’s image to her earlier recording of the “Gypsy Song.”