Dialogues des Carmélites
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| Title: | Conversations of the Carmelites |
| Original title: | Dialogues des Carmélites |
Elin Rombo as sister Blanche, Stockholm Royal Opera 2011 |
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| Shape: | Opera in three acts and twelve pictures |
| Original language: | French |
| Music: | Francis Poulenc |
| Libretto : | Francis Poulenc |
| Literary source: | Gertrud von Le Fort : The last one on the scaffold |
| Premiere: | January 26, 1957 |
| Place of premiere: | Teatro alla Scala , Milan |
| Playing time: | approx. 2 ½ hours |
| Place and time of the action: | Paris, July 1794 |
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Dialogues des Carmélites (it. Dialoghi delle Carmelitane , Eng. Conversations of the Carmelite Sisters ) is a tragic opera in three acts with twelve pictures from 1956 by Francis Poulenc , which he composed as a commission for La Scala in Milan . The libretto is based on the play of the same name based on a screenplay by Georges Bernanos (German: Die gnadete Angst ), which in turn was modeled on the novella The Last on the Scaffold by Gertrud von Le Fort . The world premiere took place in Italian translation on January 26, 1957 in Milan and was a great success. The first performance in the French original language was on June 21, 1957 at the Paris Opera . The work deals with the events in the Carmelite monastery of Compiègne up to the execution of the 16 Carmelites by the guillotine on July 17, 1794 in Paris.
content
The opera, like the novella by Gertrud von Le Fort, is based on a historical event : on July 17, 1794, during the French Revolution, the so-called martyrs of Compiègne were guillotined for unwilling to break their vows . They went to their deaths singing. They were buried in a mass grave in a Paris cemetery, the Cimetière de Picpus . Pope Pius X beatified the Carmelites of Compiègne in 1906 .
first act
The play consists of three acts in twelve pictures and takes place during the French Revolution, around 1794. Blanche de la Force, the daughter of the Marquis de la Force and the sister of the Chevalier, is frightened. She was aggressively threatened with death by rioters on an excursion. Something similar happened to her mother and she died shortly after the birth of her daughter. Blanche asks her father for permission to enter the local Carmelite convent. There she is informed about the hard life in the monastery by the terminally ill Prioress de Croissy. Blanche is still determined and wants to take the name "Blanche of the fear of death" in the monastery. The old prioress is dying and talks to the novice mistress, mother Marie, about Blanche. She has a vision that the monastery will be destroyed and the sisters will perish.
Second act
The second act of the opera begins with Blanche and the novice Constance, who has also just entered the monastery, holding the wake of St. Dionysius for the previous prioress. Madame Lidoine is elected as the new prioress as Mother Maria Theresa by St. Augustine, and the sisters pledge their obedience. Meanwhile, the revolutionary people outside are threatening the monastery. Chevalier de la Force tries to get his sister to safety, but Blanche refuses. The revolutionaries invade the monastery, commissioners order the evacuation, but the sisters are determined to stay.
Third act
In the third act, in the absence of the prioress, mother Marie tries to persuade her fellow sisters to follow the path of sacrificial death. In the following vote, Constance is initially against, she wants Blanche to be spared, but then bows to the majority. Blanche flees the monastery when a commissioner orders the nuns to leave the cloister . Mother Marie visits Blanche, who has sought refuge in her vacant parental home - her father has already been executed as a nobleman - and tells her about the mortal danger the other sisters find themselves in. But she fails to get her to come along. The prioress returns to the sisters and prepares them for death. Blanche learns that everyone is to be executed that day, and a cart finally takes them to the scaffold . In the finale of the piece, the sisters begin to sing together, then one by one they are guillotined. When Constance's turn is last, Blanche pushes through the crowd and dies with her.
Instrumentation
The orchestral line-up for the opera includes the following instruments:
- Woodwinds : piccolo , two flutes , two oboes , English horn , two clarinets , bass clarinet , three bassoons (3rd also contrabassoon)
- Brass : four horns , three trumpets , three trombones , bass tuba
- Timpani , drums : snare drum , bass drum , bell drum , triangle , hanging cymbal , tam-tam , glockenspiel , crotales , xylophone , block of wood, whip, bells, bell bells, bells in g ', h' and d ''
- Celesta , piano , two harps
- Strings
- Incidental music: bells in a ', h', c '' and e '' '
history
Emergence
In 1953, the director of the Milan music publisher Ricordi , Guido Valcarenghi, suggested that Francis Poulenc commission a ballet about the Italian penitent Margaret of Cortona for the Teatro alla Scala in Milan . However, Poulenc found the story of the saints uninteresting; he preferred to set a libretto on the Dialogues des Carmélites to music and began composing it in early August 1953. Work on the score proceeded without difficulty until March next year, but then Poulenc suffered grief due to the serious illness of his partner Lucien Roubert. In addition, there were differences in performance law with the literary original. In the summer of 1954, Poulenc had to go to inpatient treatment because of his nervous problems. He was only able to continue working on his work a year later. The orchestration was completed in June and the world premiere took place on January 26, 1957 at La Scala in Milan in an Italian translation of the libretto. The French-language premiere followed on June 21 at the Opéra de Paris , in the cast requested by Poulenc with Denise Duval in the role of Blanche de la Force, Régine Crespin as second prioress and Rita Gorr as mother Marie.
The actors of the world premieres were:
| role | Pitch | First performance on January 26, 1957 in Milan in Italian Conductor: Nino Sanzogno |
Revised version on June 21, 1957 in Paris in French Conductor: Pierre Dervaux |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marquis de la Force | baritone | Scipio Colombo | Xavier Depraz |
| Blanche de la Force | soprano | Virginia Zeani | Denise Duval |
| Chevalier de la Force | tenor | Nicola Filacuridi | Jean Giraudeau |
| Madame de Croissy | Old | Gianna Pederzini | Denise Scharley |
| Madame Lidoine | soprano | Leyla Gencer | Regine Crespin |
| Mother Mary of the Incarnation | Mezzo-soprano | Gigliola Frazzoni | Rita Gorr |
| Sister Constance of St. Dionysius | soprano | Eugenia Ratti | Liliane Berton |
| Mother Jeanne of the Child Jesus | Old | Vittoria Palombini | Janine Fourrier |
| Sister Mathilde | Mezzo-soprano | Fiorenza Cossotto | Gisele Desmoutiers |
| confessor | tenor | Alvino Manelli | Michel Forel |
| First commissioner | tenor | Antonio Pirino | Raphael Romagnoni |
| Thierry | baritone | Armando Manelli | Michel Forel |
| Javelinot | baritone | Carlo Gasperini | Max Conti |
reception
The opera was already a success when it was first performed and is now considered to be one of the most important works of music theater of the 20th century, which is regularly staged and performed, for example in Berlin in 1994 ( Deutsche Oper , directed by Günter Krämer ) and 2011 ( Komische Oper , Directed by Calixto Bieito ). Michael Schulz's production in the 1997/98 season at the Aalto-Musiktheater Essen received the Götz-Friedrich-Prize .
The production by Dmitri Tschernjakow at the Bavarian State Opera from 2010 with a modified ending in which only Blanche dies, prompted the heirs of Poulenc and Bernanos to take legal action against a revival: “In the opinion of the heirs, the martyrdom of all nuns must necessarily be staged implemented. Otherwise interpretations would open up that would not do justice to the core message of the work. ”In the first instance, the lawsuit was dismissed. The Tribunal de Grande Instance de Paris ruled that the controversial staging respected the "core of the work". In the second instance, the court of appeal in Paris essentially agreed with this view, but the recording of the production on DVD may no longer be distributed.
Scenic example and audio sample
- YouTube video of the finale of a production by the Opéra national du Rhin Strasbourg, from 1999
Web links
- Dialogues des Carmélites, FP 159 : Sheet music and audio files in the International Music Score Library Project
- Action by Dialogues des Carmélites at Opera-Guide target page due to URL change currently unavailable
- Libretto (French / Spanish) as full text in Kareol
Individual evidence
- ↑ Action by Dialogues des Carmélites on Opera-Guide target page due to URL change currently not available .
- ^ Dialoghi delle Carmelitane. In: Piper's Encyclopedia of Musical Theater. Vol. 5. Works. Piccinni - Spontini. Piper, Munich and Zurich 1994, ISBN 3-492-02415-7 , pp. 61-63.
- ↑ Benoit van Langenhove: Dialogues des Carmélites , on the website lamediatheque.be , accessed on March 24, 2012.
- ^ Website Oper aktuell ( memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ).
- ↑ Calixto Bieito's surprising Dialogues of the Carmelites. In: Likely Impossibilites, July 2011, accessed April 6, 2018.
- ↑ "Dialogues des Carmélites": Overcoming fear Premiere criticism on merkur-online on March 29, 2010, accessed on January 14, 2016.
- ↑ The program of the Bavarian State Opera from January 28, 2016 at muenchenbuehnen.de, accessed on May 1, 2019.
- ↑ Heirs want to legally prohibit performance. Message from staatsoper.de, accessed on January 14, 2016 ( memento from January 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ).