In the Grim Fate of 16 Nuns, Exploring the End Awaiting Us All (original) (raw)
Arts|In the Grim Fate of 16 Nuns, Exploring the End Awaiting Us All
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OPERA REVIEW
- Oct. 14, 2004
"Dialogues of the Carmelites" is a meditation on death by men on the far side of middle age, contemplating their own mortality. The story of 16 nuns guillotined by French revolutionaries in 1794 is true. Georges Bernanos, in his play 150 years later, used history to confront his own terminal cancer. Francis Poulenc, six years from his own death in 1963 and witness to the slow dying of his closest friend, took up the thread in this chaste and touching opera.
Poulenc's "Dialogues" came to New York City Opera on Tuesday, transposing Tazewell Thompson's production for Glimmerglass Opera to the stage of the New York State Theater. The texts were in English, following the composer's wish to match language to audience.
The paradox of composer and theme hardly needs to be restated: Poulenc, the dashing boulevardier and tasteful sentimentalist; these 18th-century women of the church confronting the fear and exultation of martyrdom. Poulenc succeeds by being himself. There are the floating, open textures of his lighthearted period, the same gentle mockery devoid of cynicism, the melodies colored by popular culture and the harmonic gestures closer to Nelson Riddle than to tragic Verdi.
Indeed, in its pursuit of disagreeable profundities, Poulenc's music resists heaviness. As it examines the dying and their various executioners, a certain innocence -- a naïveté born of great sophistication -- remains. Poulenc reminds us a little of the juggler of Christian lore plying his carnival skills as an offering at the altar.
On Tuesday Donald Eastman's set came as a welcome relief from the overstuffed beauties of the Metropolitan Opera's new "Magic Flute" a few days before. The quarters of the old Marquis (Jake Gardner) are draped in blood red. Elsewhere, there are a masonry wall, two long tables and a chair. There are no tricks. Virtually nothing moves.
"Dialogues" is an opera for women; men's voices are almost intrusions. Mr. Thompson must deal with a female ensemble trained first as singers, then as actors. Some are more convincing than others, but a lot of the visceral terrors and happinesses come through. Rinat Shaham sang Blanche in a cultured mezzo-soprano of modest size. Sarah Coburn's Sister Constance reminded us of the bright ardor intrinsic to Poulenc's style.
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