Francis Poulenc
Dialogues des Carmelites

* Denise Duval (Blanche de la Force)
* Regine Crespin (New Prioress)
* Liliane Berton (Soeur Constance)
* Rita Gorr (Mere Marie)

Choeurs et Orchestre du Theatre National de l'Opera de Paris/Pierre Dervaux
EMI 5 67136 2 Total time:  74:52 + 69:02

Summary for the Busy Executive: A classic of Poulenc discography.

I probably don't have a religious or spiritual bone in my body.  For some
strange reason, however, I've read a lot of Catholic writing - Newman,
Chesterton, Knox, Simon - all very entertaining authors.  Somehow, they
make supernaturalism sound so reasonable that occasionally I wonder whether
I could have become Catholic myself.  Then I come up against a work like
this and conclude the answer to that question is "not hardly likely."
George Bernanos's work makes me realize that I will remain an outsider.
There's a kind of mysticism here that simply puts me off.  I have nothing
against mysticism per se, but I do like it allied to insight or somehow
anchored to this world.

I, however, am not Poulenc, who considered this opera his greatest work.
It certainly has some of his very best music, one of the very few modernist
20th-century operas - along with Stravinsky's Rake's Progress and Berg's
Wozzeck - to hold a firm place in the international repertory.  Still, the
central plot point is so bizarre that at times I wonder what audiences are
responding to.  I feel like the horse in Tolstoy's Resurrection.

The Dialogues concern a young noblewoman, Blanche de la Force, an hysteric
afraid of just about everything.  Just before the French Revolution, she
enters a Carmelite convent to hide from the world.  The Prioress, who for
reasons unexplained has taken a liking to Blanche (apparently, only one
other sister, Constance - who likes everybody - can put up with Blanche),
lies in her deathbed and worries about the young woman.  She expresses the
wish that she might trade her death for Blanche's.  The Prioress begins to
suffer the terrifying visions - the priory in ruins, the altar desecrated.
Blanche overhears this, and prays by the Prioress's bedside.  The Prioress
dies.

The nuns in turn keep watch over the corpse, to pray continually for the
soul of the Prioress.  Blanche, alone with the corpse, becomes frightened.
She starts to leave, only to be met by Mother Marie, the Prioress's deputy,
who sees through Blanche's feeble excuse.  Later, Constance wonders aloud
about the death of the Prioress.  If one considered the Prioress's life,
she seemed to suffer someone else's death, "as when you are given the wrong
coat in a cloakroom."

Meanwhile, the Revolution begins.  Mother Marie and the new prioress
counsels prayer.  The Father Confessor of the convent goes into hiding.
There is a suggestion of martyrdom, but the new prioress quashes the
suggestion from Mother Marie.  The nuns are expelled from the convent,
which the mob turns into a ruin.  In the absence of the prioress, Mother
Marie again proposes martyrdom.  The nuns show a lack of enthusiasm for
the idea, but the reasons have nothing to do with personal safety.  Mother
Marie proposes that the vote be secret and unanimous.  If there is even one
vote against, no one will take the vow.  There is one vote against (guess
who?).  The nuns begin to turn against Blanche, but Constance says that it
was she herself who cast the no vote.  She informs them that she now sees
she was wrong and votes yes.  In the confusion, Blanche runs away.  Mother
Marie goes to look for her.

The Revolution arrests the nuns, including the prioress, who has been
shocked to hear of the vow of martyrdom.  Nevertheless, she too takes it.
In the meantime, Mother Marie finds Blanche, hiding as a maid, and tells
her to meet her in a safe house, so that they can rejoin their sisters.
Blanche tells Mother Marie not to expect her.

The nuns are condemned to the guillotine.  Mother Marie wants to rejoin
them, but the Father Confessor in effect forbids her.  The nun who in
effect forced the vow of martyrdom on others is prevented from fulfilling
it, while the nun who did everything she could to dissuade others from the
vow willingly takes it on.  The nuns die, one by one.  Sister Constance is
the last.  She catches sight of Blanche in the crowd before she is killed.
Blanche then steps forward, fearless, and calmly mounts the scaffold to her
death.

If this were a story of pride - Mother Marie vs.  the new prioress - it
would make more sense to me.  However, the idea of trading deaths drags
this story to the level of a Twilight Zone episode.  It seems to cheapen
the sacrifice of the other nuns.

Poulenc's music moves from great psychological richness to a naive and
even majestic piety.  Highlights include most of Blanche's music.  Poulenc
captures the terrors and especially the false resolutions of this timorous
soul, as well as the swings between humiliation and false pride.  Poulenc
knew hysteria himself, having suffered through a psychologically ruinous
love affair (his great friend and collaborator, Pierre Bernac, helped pull
him through).  The story may have originally attracted him because of this.
Nevertheless, despite Poulenc's deep dramatic insight into Blanche, the
resolution offered by the story is fairly lame.  Blanche up to just before
her death is as frightened as she was in the first scene.  The story does
not let us witness the course of transformation.

Still, Poulenc's music goes a long way to winning us over.  Highlights
include the various religious set pieces - an Ave Maria and an Ave verum
corpus - the gravely beautiful instrumental interludes, and especially
the last scene - a grand march to the scaffold.  The music has the
monumentality of (and indeed is heavily based on) Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex,
the masterpiece that taught neoclassic composers how to move beyond
Mozartean and Bach pastiche.  Here, however, is Poulenc's greatest coup
de theatre.  The nuns go to their deaths singing the hymn Salve regina.  A
nun mounts the steps to the guillotine, just offstage.  Suddenly the blade
falls with a huge, heavy, horrifying wallop.  It's a brilliant stroke of
orchestration, for the blade is as much a part of the music as it is a
sound effect - a combination which includes hammer and harp, among other
instruments.  The march continues, this time with fewer voices, but its
intensity seems to grow.  The nuns climb the scaffold, the blade drops, and
the voices decrease.  Finally, we come to the single voice of Constance,
reduced to a horrible squawk by the blow of the blade, in the middle of the
word "Maria." It's now Blanche's turn.  She sings the last four lines of
the hymn Veni Creator Spiritus to music of great radiance.  If a listener
is ever to be convinced, it's here.  The guillotine chops her off as well,
with a final ghastly stroke.

This re-issue restores a classic to the catalogue.  Denise Duval, one of
the great singing actresses of our time, inspired all three of Poulenc's
operas (Les Mamelles de Tiresias, Dialogues, and La Voix humaine).  Her
acting range was astonishing (she worked early on at the Folies Bergeres),
and she repeats one of her greatest roles.  Regine Crespin was probably the
great French Wagnerian of her day.  Vocally, the production is worry-free.
Liliane Berton, as Sister Constance, stands out dramatically, with an
electrifying sweetness to her voice.  Duval is superb dramatically, and I
don't speak French very well.  But she certainly can convey a mood, or even
several moods at once.

Dervaux and his players do well enough, although the recent Kent Nagano on
EMD/Virgin 59227 has it all over them in finish.  Dramatically (and this to
me is the point of opera), the earlier performance scores over the later
one.  EMI originally released the LPs in a sumptuous box (I still have my
set) and lavished their best efforts on the recording.  The sound is the
best of the early stereo era, still quite fine.

Steve Schwartz