| Date and venue | Title |
|---|---|
| 8-May-2013 Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts | The stark glory of Robert Carsen's Dialogues des Carmélites with Canadian Opera Company |
 Francis Poulenc’s 1957 opera Dialogues des Carmélites has the virtues of necessity. Director Robert Carsten’s production puts these virtues before us in simple black and white. The virtues begin with the story: Blanche, an aristocrat afraid of the French Revolution who hopes to find refuge in a nunnery, becomes a refugee of religious persecution, and chooses to die a martyr with her sisters. The story is told with a minimum of props and no end of imaginative staging, lighting and costumes.Read full review... | |
| 4-May-2013 Lincoln Center: Metropolitan Opera House | The Met's soul-searing Dialogues des Carmélites can't be missed |
 Of all the surprising backdrops for grand opera in the universe of operas, surely the prayers of a contemplative order of nuns top any list. Yet, this three-act opera was so riveting, soul-searing, and utterly shocking that audience members were bereft of their senses by the final act, and bereft is no exaggeration. The Carmelite convent of Compiègne during the French Revolution provides the most gripping setting imaginable for Francis Poulenc’s opera Dialogues des Carmélites.
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| 21-Apr-2011 Theater an der Wien | The Theater an der Wien’s subtle Dialogues des Carmélites |
 Never a city to shy away from seasonal programming, this Easter Vienna is offering productions of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, Gounod’s Faust, and Wagner’s Parsifal. The latter two, at the Staatsoper, are familiar, but audiences should run to see the Theater an der Wien’s enthralling revival of Poulenc’s relatively rarely-produced masterwork.
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| 7-Mar-2011 Guildhall School Theatre | Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites at the Guildhall Schol of Music |
 In 1790s France, a young noblewoman, Blanche de La Force, decides to enter a Carmelite convent. As the increasingly paranoid revolutionaries close in, Blanche, her family and the nuns hold a series of discussions on their circumstances, the danger, their faith and, ultimately, their martyrdom. You might think that it doesn't sound much like exciting material for a dynamic, dramatic opera - but you'd be wrong.Read full review... | |
