When the opera “Dialogues des Carmélites” by Francis Poulenc (1899–1963) was given its world première at the Scala in Milano in 1957, the story of the sixteen martyred nuns of Compiègne, murdered under the guillotine on the Place de la Révolution on 17 July 1794, had already been told in several forms. For Gertrud von Le Fort it was the scenario in 1931 for her narrative “The Last on the Scaffold”, relating how the young noblewoman Blanche de la Force suffered from childhood from existential fear and hoped to find peace from the affliction in the end by joining the order of the Carmelites; but there she can escape neither herself nor the French Revolution. The convent is sacked and the nuns arrested and subsequently condemned to death under the guillotine. In her fear Blanche first tries to flee before then finding her own personal strength to follow her sisters on to the scaffold.

The story of the Compiègne martyrs increased its topicality when a totalitarian régime threatened – as with La Fort in 1931 just before the rise of the Nazis – or when such a régime had caused the collapse of the moral pillars of society, as with Georges Bernanos in 1947. Poulenc built his opera on the foundation of dialogues sketched by Bernanos for a planned film version.

The staging of the renowned Flemish director Guy Joosten, first performed last season in Düsseldorf, is now to be shown in Theater Duisburg also.

“Deutsche Oper am Rhein offers magnificent music-theatre with its new production. […] The stage is a hermetically sealed confidential room warding off the threats of impious unbelief outside. Johannes Leiacker shrewdly makes the black-and-white of the nuns’ habits into the basic tone of the set; at the end the floor of the death cell will be a small whitewashed square area driving the pious women into a sort of sheepfold. Director Guy Joosten ingeniously keeps step with Leiacker’s concentration on spatially quiet transport of symbols
Wolfram Goertz, Rheinische Post



The "operascouts" of the Deutsche Oper am Rhein visited the premiére of Poulenc's "Dialogues des Carmélites". Read what they thought about this production (in English and German) in "Erlebte Oper... Erlebter Tanz" - Impressionen unserer Scouts zu "Dialogues des Carmélites", which you can download here .
 
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Francis Poulenc

DIALOGUES DES CARMÉLITES
Opéra in three acts and twelve scenes
Libretto by the composer after the eponymous drama by Georges Bernanos

 
In French with German surtitles
 

Musikalische Leitung Axel Kober
Inszenierung Guy Joosten
Bühne und Kostüme Johannes Leiacker
Licht Manfred Voss
Chorleitung Christoph Kurig
Produktionsdramaturg Luc Joosten
Dramaturgie Bernhard F. Loges
 
Marquis de la Force John Wegner
Blanche Anett Fritsch
Chevalier Corby Welch
Madame de Croissy, Priorin Susan Maclean
Madame Lidoine, neue Priorin Helen Lyons
Mère Marie Jeanne Piland
Soeur Constance Alma Sadé
Mère Jeanne Katarzyna Kuncio
Soeur Mathilde Maria Kataeva
Beichtvater Bruce Rankin
Erster Kommissar Florian Simson
Zweiter Kommissar Lukasz Konieczny
Offizier Bogdan Baciu
Kerkermeister Dmitry Lavrov
Thierry Dmitry Lavrov
Monsieur Javelinot Manfred Klee
Chor Chor der Deutschen Oper am Rhein
Orchester Düsseldorfer Symphoniker