Metropolitan Opera · 2022–23 season

Dialogs of the Carmelites

Francis Poulenc

Saturday, January 21, 2023

The story

French revolution martyrs nuns. Lots of laughs.

The hero's fate

Guillotined with her sisters

The cast

Blanche de la ForceSoprano Ailyn Pérez^*
Madame de CroissyMezzo-soprano Alice Coote^*
Madame LidoineSoprano Christine Goerke^*
Sœur ConstanceSoprano Sabine Devieilhe^*
Mère MarieMezzo-soprano Jamie Barton^*
Marquis de la ForceBaritone Laurent Naouri^*
Chevalier de la ForceTenor Piotr Buszewski^*

* Cast for the run; a cover may have sung this night.

The production

Conductor: Bertrand de Billy
Director: John Dexter
Production: 1977
Length: 3 h 09 min

The opera

Premiere: 1957
Libretto: Georges Bernanos
Language: French

Dialogues des Carmélites (French pronunciation: [djalɔɡ de kaʁmelit], Dialogues of the Carmelites), FP 159, is an opera in three acts, divided into twelve scenes with linking orchestral interludes, with music and libretto by Francis Poulenc, completed in 1956. Poulenc wrote the libretto for his second opera after the work of the same name by Georges Bernanos, itself based on The Song at the Scaffold by Gertrud von Le Fort. This is a fictionalized version of the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns who, in 1794 during the closing days of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce their vocation.

The world première of the opera occurred (in Italian translation) on 26 January 1957 at La Scala in Milan. The première of the French-language version took place in Paris on 21 June 1957. The United States première, in English, followed in San Francisco in September 1957.

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