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October 18, 2004
TT: Words to the wise
I was going to write about New York City Opera's new production of Dialogues of the Carmelites, Francis Poulenc's masterpiece, but it seems that Bernard Holland, writing in the New York Times, already said much of what I wanted to say:"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....
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....George Manahan's pit orchestra had a particularly good night.
To which I would add only that the score of Poulenc's harrowing parable of faith, fear, and grace is more than merely pretty. He also mixed in a gritty scoopful of Stravinsky (including a startling near-verbatim quotation from Symphonies of Wind Instruments), thereby sharpening the contrast between the world and the cloister and underlining the opera's already fascinating duality of tone.
Those who recall the iconic monumentality of John Dexter's 1977 Metropolitan Opera production (or its two subsequent revivals) will naturally wonder how New York City Opera's version stands up to comparison. The answer is that it holds its own quite well. To be sure, Dexter's Dialogues was one of the great theatrical experiences of my lifetime, while Tazewell Thompson's straightforward, uncluttered staging is merely very effective. Still, it works, and the opera itself comes through with complete clarity--which is, after all, the point.
Dialogues plays in repertory at the New York State Theater through October 29. For more information, go here.
Posted October 18, 2004 12:05 PM
