Francis Poulenc’s Opera of Devout Anonymity

Yesterday afternoon San Francisco Opera (SFO) concluded its five-performance run of Francis Poulenc’s only full-evening opera, Dialogues des Carmélites (dialogues of the Carmelites). Having seen to the basics of the production in my account of the opening night, I wanted to discuss an element of context, which distinguishes Poulenc’s efforts (since he also provided his own libretto) from those of just about any other opera, that of personal identity.

That element is strongest in the protagonist, Blanche de la Force (soprano Heidi Stober). The Reign of Terror has placed her aristocratic family under a threat that can only be diverted by leaving France. Blanche, on the other hand, sacrifices her comfortable upbringing by seeking admission to the Carmelite Order in Compiègne. The casting for this opera accounts for seventeen nuns, whose company she joins. As the narrative unfolds, we begin to appreciate a tension between her own sense of identify and the anonymity of the convent itself.

Poulenc himself seems to have appreciated this context of anonymity. It is not that individuals never address each other by name. Rather, the setting is one in which such ordinary conversation does not take place. The nuns go about their business of service attending only to their practices and not to each other. Even the most attentive viewers of this opera may be forgiven for losing track of Blanche on the stage as the narrative unfolds.

The one exception is the Prioress of the order, Madame de Croissy, sung by mezzo Michaela Schuster. The first act concludes with her death in the convent’s infirmary. Olivier Py took a particularly imaginative approach to this scene, providing the audience with an overhead view of the Prioress:

photograph by Cory Weaver, courtesy of SFO

Some readers may recall a similar approach to an episode from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s opera The Queen of Spades, which SFO presented in the spring of 2005. In that case the view was of the old Countess in her bed, looking even more haggard than usual because, for that scene, she was depicted by a Lunatique Fantastique puppet.

The only intermission for Poulenc’s opera took place after the death of the Prioress. The remaining two acts were performed separated only by a short pause. This made for a symmetry that may have guided Poulenc’s approach to the narrative. The death of the Prioress is reflected by the guillotining of the Carmelite nuns in the final scene. Each of these episodes assumes a transcendent character in which the pain of life on earth is discarded with the admission to Heaven. (In that final scene Py conceived a representation of each nun’s soul entering Heaven, which turned out to be remarkably effective, if not reassuring after the horrors of the guillotine.)

In spire of its origins as a film, this is a narrative that does not lend itself readily to narration. Perhaps one of the advantages of opera is that music can assume the duties of narration when words are not readily available. Poulenc seems to have recognized the need for just the right interplay between music and words, resulting in a dramatic experience like no other we are likely to encounter.