Many people carry the mental image of opera as something of a cross between Wagner and Bugs Bunny; corpulent, blonde pigtailed songbirds or dark Spanish beauties warbling about love amidst velvet curtains and lavish sets. But opera is a diverse art form, and this weekend Washington University Opera will be performing Francis Poulenc’s The Dialogues of the Carmelites. The opera tells the story of 16 Carmelite nuns who refused to renounce their faith during the French Revolution and who were subsequently beheaded and martyred.
Francis Poulenc was one of France’s most influential composers of the middle 20th century, and he wrote The Dialogues of the Carmelites in 1955, with source material from a scene written by Georges Bernanos, who used a Gertrude von LeFort’s novelization of the memoir by Mother Marie of the Incarnation of God, the only surviving nun from the Carmelite group. Mother Marie only escaped because she was traveling and was not present for the massacre of July 17, 1794.
In The Dialogues of the Carmelites, the fictional Sister Blanche, a young woman who joins the Carmelites shortly before the French Revolution, hopes to find peace through faith. When the nuns are ordered to disband or die, Blanche panics and flees, but ultimately decides to return to the nunnery to be executed with her sisters in faith.
Washington University Opera director Jolly Stewart, who with her husband, John Stewart, founded the Washington University Opera in 1991, was particularly attracted to this opera. She prepared for the show through extensive historical reading and visited the Carmelite monastery in St. Louis. Stewart explains that through many of the French Revolution’s bloody public executions, there was a macabre celebratory atmosphere, but that, “on the day the nuns went, there was complete silence. The nuns began chanting from the Latin Mass, then the sound of the guillotine, the chop and the sound of the heads falling.”
Kendra Ford, current New York resident and a 2001 graduate in Arts & Sciences, star as Blanche. Senior music major Kendall Gladen, recent recipient of the second place award at the regional Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in Kansas City, will play the first prioress. Other lead performers will be master’s candidates Elizabeth Hendricks as Sister Constance and Allison Hoppe as the second prioress.
Where: Graham Chapel
When: 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday, March 15 and 16
How Much: $12 general , $6 for faculty, staff and students
Who to Call: 935-6543