#Dialogues des Carmélites

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

but yeah seriously. have you ever had a blorbo from your shows get canonized

[doyouknowthisopera]

[jewish-fanboy]

the dialogues of the carmelites is such a stunningly explanatory name for an opera.

like. they’re nuns. they talk. wow. an opera. about nuns talking.

oh yeah and then they die

[cassowary-rapture]

Watching Dialogues des Carmélites because I am that obsessed with the finale. I thought it might be hard to find but the whole thing (the Metropolitan Opera one) is on YouTube with English subtitles!

I love how Blanche's dad is like "Ehh you're worrying too much" re: her brother saying she was spotted with her carriage surrounded by a mob and then like 30 seconds later has a very dramatic flashback to his own experience with an unruly mob followed by his wife dying in childbirth later that same day

Poor guy just wants to read a book with his little lap blanket and instead he gets that, his son venting to him, and his daughter announcing she wants to become a nun

Currently ~40 minutes in. Sister Constance is adorable and Blanche is kind of a killjoy. Or, you know, having a more appropriate emotional response to current events

Stopping at 47:31 because I am tired and keep zoning out between subtitles and having to rewind, but I'm looking forward to watching more of it!

Also, for future reference, it's based on the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, but kind of indirectly? There was Die Letzte am Schafott (The Last on the Scaffold), a novella by Gertrud von Le Fort, published in English as The Song at the Scaffold. It was adapted into a play called The Song at the Scaffold and a screenplay that ended up being performed as a play called Dialogues des Carmélites (Dialogues of the Carmelites). The latter was published in German as Die begnadete Angst (The Blessed Fear) and adapted into an opera by Poulenc and later served as the basis for two films, Le Dialogue des Carmélites and Dialogues des Carmélites, with the latter apparently being more faithful to the original Dialogues des Carmélites

[joaquimblog]

DIALOGUES DES CARMÉLITES A LES ARTS 2024-2025

Salutació final al Palau de Les Arts, Dialogues des Carmélites 23 de gener de 2025 Abans d’ahir, 23 de gener de 2025 es va complir un de les mancances operístiques de la meva vida, assistir per primera vegada a una representació al teatre, de l’òpera de Francis Poluenc, Dialogues des Carmélites, estrenada a la Scala de Milà el 26 de gener de 1957 en italià i a París en francès el 21 de juny del…

[delaruecaalapluma]

El martirio de las carmelitas, en el Palau de les Arts

El martirio de las carmelitas: Poulenc en el Palau de les Arts-

El Palau de les Arts de Valencia presenta, desde el 23 de enero hasta el 2 de febrero de 2025, la aclamada ópera “Dialogues des Carmélites” de Francis Poulenc. Esta obra maestra del siglo XX, basada en la obra teatral homónima de Georges Bernanos, narra la conmovedora historia de las 16 monjas carmelitas descalzas de Compiègne (Francia), que fueron guillotinadas durante la Revolución Francesa por…

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

!!!

[musicloves]

Francis Poulenc: 1899-1963

Clarinet Sonata

La Voix Humane

Piano Concerto

Concerto for organ, strings and timpani

Dialogues des Carmélites

[princesssarisa]

Here's a big list I've made (because of course I had to) of opera birthdays, for anyone who wants to remember and celebrate them.

(Les Contes d'Hoffmann shares my birthday!)

January

2: Der Fliegende Holländer

3: Don Pasquale

14: Tosca

15: Vanessa

19: Il Trovatore, Manon

21: Jenufa

22: Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk

23: Eugene Onegin

24: I Puritani

25: La Cenerentola, Elektra

26: Cosí Fan Tutte, Der Rosenkavalier, Dialogues des Carmélites

27: Boris Godunov

29: Idomeneo

February

1: La Bohéme, Manon Lescaut

2: Louise

3: Semiramide

5: Otello

6: La Voix Humaine

7: Orphée aux Enfers, Four Saints in Three Acts, Il Matrimonio Segreto,

9: Falstaff, Khovanschina

10: Les Contes d’Hoffmann

11: La Fille du Régiment

16: Werther

17: Madama Butterfly, Un Ballo in Maschera

19: Don Quichotte

20: Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Giulio Cesare, La Wally

23: La Juive

24: Rinaldo

29: La Forza del Destino

March

3: Carmen

6: La Traviata, La Sonnambula

9: Nabucco, Ernani, Die Lustige Weiber von Windsor

11: Rigoletto, Don Carlos, I Capuleti e I Montecchi

12: Simon Boccanegra

13: Médée (Cherubini)

14: Macbeth

16: Thaïs

17: Attila

19: Faust

21: L’Enfant et les Sortileges

27: La Rondine

28: Andréa Chenier

31: Rusalka

April

5: Die Fledermaus

8: La Gioconda

10: L’Amore dei Tre Re

14: Lakmé

15: Serse

16: Alcina, Le Prophéte

25: Turandot

27: Roméo et Juliette

28: L’Africaine

30: Pelléas et Melisande

May

1: Le Nozze di Figaro

5: Mefistofele

12: L’Elisir d’Amore

17: Cavalleria Rusticana

18: Iphigénie en Tauride

19: L’Heure Espagnole

21: Pagliacci, Doktor Faust

22: L’Italiana in Algeri

24: Duke Bluebeard’s Castle, Cendrillon

30: The Bartered Bride

June

6: Moses und Aron

7: Peter Grimes

10: Tristan und Isolde

11: A Midsummer Night’s Dream (Britten)

12: War and Peace

13: Les Vêpres Siciliennes/I Vespri Siciliani

18: Der Freischütz

20: Albert Herring, La Navarraise

21: Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg

26: Die Wälkure

July

1: Arabella

16: Die Entführung aus dem Serail

26: Parsifal

August

3: Guillaume Tell

9: Béatrice et Bénédict

14: Il Turco in Italia

16: Siegfried

17: Götterdämmerung

28: Lohengrin

September

5: La Serva Padrona, Satyagraha

6: La Clemenza di Tito

11: The Rake’s Progress

14: The Turn of the Screw

22: Das Rheingold

24: La Donna del Lago

26: Lucia di Lammermoor

30: Die Zauberflöte, Les Pêcheurs de Perles, Porgy and Bess

October

5: Orfeo ed Euridice

7: The Golden Cockerel

10: Die Frau ohne Schatten

19: Tannhäuser

22: Nixon in China

25: Ariadne auf Naxos

28: Roberto Devereux, Cappriccio

29: Don Giovanni

31: L’Amico Fritz

November

4: Les Troyens, Prince Igor, Intermezzo

6: Adriana Lecouvreur, The Cunning Little Vixen

10: La Forza del Destino

16: Stiffelio

17: Fedora

20: Fidelio

23: Kát’a Kabanová

25: Martha

27: L’Arlesiana, Ruslan and Lyudmila, The Bohemian Girl

December

1: Billy Budd

2: Samson et Dalila, La Favourite

4: Die Tote Stadt

6: La Damnation de Faust

8: Luisa Miller

9: Salome

10: La Fanciulla del West

14: Il Trittico (Il Tabarro, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi), Wozzeck

18: Iolanta

19: Pique Dame, The Ghosts of Versailles

23: Hänsel und Gretel

24: Aida, Amahl and the Night Visitors

26: Norma, Alceste, Anna Bolena

30: The Merry Widow, Maria Stuarda, The Love for Three Oranges

i do think it’s a really fun feature that operas have birthdays. i know that everything can have a birthday if you know how to look at things but i love that every march 6 i see people saying happy birthday la traviata!! and every october 29 i see jokes about how of course don giovanni the opera is a scorpio (although i think don giovanni the character should have been born in may). there’s something so kind about it

[monstrousgourmandizingcats]

she dialogue with my carmelites till i lottielee. is this anything

[hairtusk]

does anyone happen to have a link to a good recording of dialogues des carmélites ?

[cassowary-rapture]

Last day of Poulenc!

I am very tired and not sure how much more of his music I'll get through; I don't feel like I can really pay attention to it. I will probably get a second wind soon, but otherwise I might focus on learning more about him. Les Six, working with Satie and Jean Cocteau, living and composing in Nazi-occupied France...it's all very interesting!

Speaking of his music, though, I am VERY into "Salve Regina" from Dialogues des Carmélites and have spent around four hours total just listening to it over and over again. I guess I would get obsessed with a song where people are being decapitated. I was listening to it in the car earlier and turned it up and got chills when I realized it had gotten quieter because I was about two-thirds of the way through, by which point most of the nuns are dead and no longer singing

Knowing the context probably helps, but even without that, I think it might have the same emotional impact. It's certainly not a piece you can listen to without realizing that something terrible is happening. The sense of hopelessness, helplessness, and resignation in the face of an awful fate

I especially like how the first death, the first guillotine sound, at around 1:24 in both the video I posted earlier and the audio I've been listening to (Kent Nagano with the Orchestre de l'Opéra de Lyon) is startling and their singing immediately becomes more intense while future deaths, aside from the last one, which is still substantially less dramatic than the first, almost blend into the music. No noticeable response from the singers. They sing over it, or it seemingly happens in the middle of a line or between lines, during a natural pause, or it's followed by silence from the singers but not in a way that feels like it means anything -- not like it's suggesting that that death was particularly noteworthy

If he had kept up the pattern of the first death, highlighting each one, it might feel like a bit much. But he didn't and it's so good. It's underway. It's inescapable. All they can do is wait their turn to be swept away by it

And yeah, the tipping point where you realize it's gotten quieter and why

And this, from the Wiki page:

At the place of execution, one nun after another stands and slowly processes toward the guillotine, as all sing the "Salve Regina" ("Hail, Holy Queen"). At the last moment, Blanche appears, to Constance's joy, to join her condemned sisters. Having seen all the other nuns executed, as she mounts the scaffold, Blanche sings the final stanza of the "Veni Creator Spiritus," "Deo Patri sit gloria…", the Catholic hymn traditionally used when taking vows in a religious community and offering one's life to God.

I love the idea of Blanche's solo being a sort of vow renewal, rededicating herself to both God and her fellow nuns in the brief period between her sudden return and her execution

It's such a beautiful, devastating piece. And a very stark contrast to the chaotic, playful music I started the week with. It's hard to believe that the same person was responsible for all of it, and I kind of feel like I need to reevaluate his instrumental music now

Like when I first listened to it, the lighter moments in the first movement of his Organ Concerto felt more "him," while the darker, more intense moments felt kind of shallow; I couldn't reconcile them with what I'd already heard at the time. But now...yeah

Ah. I read about his best friend dying and it prompting his return to Catholicism, but I somehow missed the fact that the friend was decapitated

From here:

Francis Poulenc’s closest friend was the affable and gregarious Pierre-Octave Ferroud (1900-1936); together they co-founded and directed the Triton contemporary chamber music group from 1932-1936. Among the younger generation of French composers, Ferroud had begun to be acclaimed for his colorful and dense orchestrations, with compositions admired and advocated by both Prokofiev and Ravel. In August 1936, while Francis Poulenc was vacationing in southwestern France, he learned that Ferroud had been beheaded in a car crash while walking along a road in Debrecen, Hungary. Immediately after hearing the news, Poulenc went to the ancient monastery Notre Dame de Rocamadour, in the Lot River Valley, with its revered “black” statue of the Virgin, a common pilgrimage destination. That night he began his first religious work, the Litanies of the Black Virgin, based on pilgrims’ prayers. At the same time, Poulenc began to examine his own religious beliefs: through a number of sacred works written over the next 25 years, he developed a unique religious musical style, both confirming and questioning the significance of faith. The violence of Ferroud’s death haunted Poulenc for years, prompting a new seriousness and depth of expression in his music—and eventually finding its grotesque echo in the celebrated guillotine finale of opera Dialogues.

Anyway

I've been meaning to listen to some of his sonatas, but I think I'll end with his Sept repons des tenebres (Seven Tenebrae Responses), which this page describes as "one of the darkest, most anguished works he ever wrote"

[sheetmusiclibrarypdf]

Francis Poulenc - Improvisation No. 15 Hommage à Edith Piaf (sheet music, partition)

Francis Poulenc - Improvisation No. 15 Hommage à Edith Piaf avec (sheet music, partition) Francis Poulenc(1899/01/07 - 1963/01/31) Please, subscribe to our Library. Thank you! Best Sheet Music download from our Library.

Francis Poulenc - Improvisation No. 15 Hommage à Edith Piaf avec (sheet music, partition)

https://dai.ly/k6tfB4MSESNxvyxEqMd

Francis Poulenc

(1899/01/07 - 1963/01/31)

Francis Poulenc French composer and pianist Born on January 7, 1899 in Paris . He studied piano with his mother until in 1913 when he received lessons from R. Viñes, and a little later from Auric and Honegger. Rapsodie nègre chamber orchestra, published when he was 18 years old and in the French Army during World War I. (1917) was his first work for solo singer and In 1920 he formed a group called Les Six (The Six). They were protesting against the influence of French composers such as Vincent d'Indy and against the impressionism of Claude Debussy , Maurice Ravel and César Franck . In the twenties, his music was heavily influenced by danceable jazz . He wrote songs, such as the cycle Le bestiaire (1919), in which his ability to time music to the rhythm of the text stood out. In 1926, he met P. Bernac , who would become the main interpreter of his songs, dedicating himself from 1937 to religious choral music . His stage works include the ballet Les biches (1924), the comic opera Les mamelles de Tirésias (1946), based on a text by Guillaume Apollinaire , and the dramatic opera Les dialogues des carmélites (1957), based on a text by Georges Bernanos . He is also the author of Concert champêtre (1928) for harpsichord and chamber orchestra, Aubade (1929) for dancer, piano and chamber orchestra, as well as works for piano and violin. Francis Poulenc died in Paris on January 31, 1963, victim of a heart attack. Read the full article