Carmelites are suddenly everywhere
OperaAround the turn of the century you could go for years without a new production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmelites. Now, they are everywhere.
No sooner has the Met ended its run than Bronx Opera is putting up another this weekend at Lehman College.
It’s also showing at Glyndebourne next month. It was at San Francisco a few months ago.
Carmelites are back in business.
Bronx Opera Company was founded in 1967 by its artistic director and music director Michael Spierman and is run by Maestro Spierman in partnership with his son Benjamin Spierman, the company’s General Director.
I’m glad. It’s a great one.
And last not least Vienna on the 19th…
The Israeli opera is also staging the Carmelites (for the first time in it’s history) next season. Asher Fisch conducts.
More cuts?
Obviously to do with the Intrinsic value of the work. A deep dive in human nature highlighting all the contradictions and fraught decisions made on a personal and collective level. More productions the better. And that’s coming from an utter non believer but Poulenc’s writing for voice is absolutely stunning.
This opera doesn’t at all convince.
The unlikeable tacky religious kitsch (not even likeable in a camp “good because it’s bad” way) of the situation and music as well as the poverty of the actual musical material makes for a long evening. Though the characters are strongly drawn, they are hard to relate to — what are we to make of the eliptical and abnormal reasoning of the minds of the devout, whose attitude to life and death is so different from our own? Only Soeur Constance is really likeable, but because she’s so explicitly normal and seems to lack the strangeness of the order’s religious sentiments (until the ending that is).
The music in Carmelites makes one almost suspect a confectionary misspelling — sickly sweet and pleasurable in small quantities but actually of little nutritious value. There are a few scenes that stick out but the lack of real musical invention makes it a dull overall listening experience.
Here I was thinking we could enjoy an opera about a cohort of women who don’t speak. What a luxury in this day and age!! “-)
You seem to like Poulenc, don’t you?
Rome Opera opened the 2022-23 season with Carmelites back in November 2022 (new production by Emma Dante conducted by Michele Mariotti, with Caroline Winters and Anna Caterina Antonacci). But I realize this is not as important as Bronx Opera, I know…