Dialogues of the Carmelites (sung in English)
Sun 30 Mar
|DEMBE Theatre
France is in turmoil. There are executions in the street. Blanche de la Force, must overcome a pathological timidity in order to answer her life’s calling. Will she stand up and be brave, or back down once again?
Time & Location
30 Mar 2025, 14:30 – 17:30
DEMBE Theatre, Pennyroyal Court, Station Rd, Tring HP23 5QY, UK
About the event
One of the most devastatingly powerful operas in the repertoire, a compelling portrait of faith, fate and human endurance, Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites (1957) is all the more astonishing because it is the composer’s only full-length opera.
It’s the achievement of a supremely gifted song composer who, after a 40-year apprenticeship, finally used his skills to paint a larger dramatic canvas.
Based on a true story, the tragedy of Poulenc’s Carmélites is both a widescreen historical and political tragedy, and an intimate psychological exploration of faith. There’s both grandeur and austerity, impact and intimacy here in music that has all the melodic beauty of Poulenc’s songs, now intensified into sung drama.
The opera takes place between 1789 and 1794 in Paris and in the town of Compiègne in northeastern France, the site of the Carmelite nuns’ convent. Its historical basis is the martyrdom of a group of 16 Carmelite nuns and lay sisters from Compiègne,…