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© PoehnDialogues des Carmélites
Opera by Francis Poulenc State Opera Vienna - Wientickets available
Dialogues des Carmélites State Opera Vienna - Wien Thu 20.Nov 2025 replace me !Dialogues des Carmélites State Opera Vienna - Wien Sun 23.Nov 2025 replace me !Dialogues des Carmélites State Opera Vienna - Wien Wed 26.Nov 2025 replace me !Dialogues des Carmélites State Opera Vienna - Wien Sat 29.Nov 2025 replace me !Compiègne near Paris, April 1789: In the Carmelite convent, the young noblewoman Blanche de la Force fights against her fear of death and for her goal of living a "heroic life".
In the midst of the Grande Terreur, the community is divided between the prioress Madame Lidoine, who urges humility, and the novice mistress Mère Marie, who preaches martyrdom for the faith. The latter prevails, and before the Revolutionary Guards ban the order, the sisters take their vows - except for the absent prioress and Blanche, who cannot withstand the pressure and flees. When the Camelites, condemned to death for counter-revolutionary conspiracy, go to the scaffold, Blanche joins the condemned.
Francis Poulenc traces his characters in a captivatingly clear score which, like almost all of his compositions, moves within a tonal framework, more precisely in that of diatonic neoclassicism. Poulenc, whose great passion was song composition, is also a composer of voices and language here: the music serves the singing, the singing forms the characters, which Poulenc shapes with individual rhythmic diction and melody and lets them enter into the dialogues that give the work its title.»Blanche, c'est moi«, wrote Francis Poulenc about the main character of his only full-length opera. »Blanche, that's me«. Here, the composer borrows the bon mot of another great French artist - "Madame Bovary, c'est moi" is what Gustave Flaubert is said to have said about his novel character. And like the quote, Poulenc appropriates the story of Blanche de La Force, who enters the Carmelite convent of Compiègne near Paris at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. The story of the 16 nuns of Compiègne, who were executed in Paris in 1794, forms the historically verified framework for a fictional plot in which the composer and librettist Poulenc tackles the ultimate human theme: The fear of death.(Source: wiener-staatsoper.at)
