Privacy Policy.<\/a><\/p>\nPoulenc and Bernanos set the action during the French Revolution\u2019s bloody anti-Catholic Terror, but men\u2019s costumes here suggest the mid-19th century \u2014 maybe the 1870-71 Franco-Prussian War? The production, originally staged by Olivier Py for the Th\u00e9\u00e2tre des Champs-Elys\u00e9es in Paris and Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Royal de la Monnaie in Brussels, is revived here by Daniel Izzo.<\/p>\n
Sets and costumes by Pierre-Andr\u00e9 Weitz, dramatically lighted by Bertrand Killy, stick to a stark black-white-and-gray color scheme. Eschewing specific settings, walls of rough boards slide in and out, sometimes opening on wintry forest scenes. <\/p>\n
No composer\u2019s musical language is more distinctive than Poulenc\u2019s. There\u2019s a directness, and a certain singsongy quality, to the tangy wind harmonies, soft lappings of strings and scorching blazes of brass. You\u2019ll walk out humming no tunes, but motifs will stick in your head. Led with sure and sympathetic hand by music director Emmanuel Villaume, the Dallas Opera Orchestra supplied every thrill and subtlety.<\/p>\n
The cast was less consistently convincing. As the ironically named Blanche de la Force, who\u2019s always running from something, soprano Joyce El-Khoury took a while to warm up vocally. Patricia Racette supplied plenty of drama as the old prioress Madame de Croissy. But on an upturned upstage bed her dying agonies, in one of the most gripping scenes in all of opera, couldn\u2019t exert the visceral impact of a closer presence. And Racette\u2019s soprano sounded too healthy for a woman, in and out of delirium, railing against her death.<\/p>\n
The successor prioress, Madame Lidoine, sees herself as a humble servant, but you wouldn\u2019t have known that from Leah Hawkins\u2019 stentorian portrayal. The vocalism was impressive, but it didn\u2019t fit, and she was rhythmically unsteady. On the other hand, St\u00e9phanie d\u2019Oustrac \u2014 a great grand-niece of Poulenc, no less \u2014 was the aptly sturdy Mother Marie, with a well appointed and beautifully expressive mezzo. Deanna Breiwick was appropriately bright-toned as Sister Constance, gradually taming the character\u2019s initial superficiality.<\/p>\n
Raymond Aceto\u2019s well-seasoned bass boomed imposingly for the pompous Marquis de la Force, father of Blanche and the Chevalier de la Force. The latter was vividly portrayed by Martin Luther Clark, with quite a handsome tenor. In this production, at least, was I alone in sensing something less than a healthy relationship between the siblings?<\/p>\n
Aaron-Casey Gould gave the convent\u2019s Chaplain the appropriate high baritone, but I wanted a smoother tone, and more gravitas to the portrayal. Andrew Potter supplied a potent, well focused baritone for the roles of Thierry and the Jailer. Samuel PJ Lopez was appropriately oily as the First Commissioner, but the role could have used more vocal oomph.<\/p>\n
Excellent contributions from the assembled nuns and crowds betokened fine preparation by chorus director Paolo Bressan.<\/p>\n
The opera ends with the nuns marching off one by one to the offstage guillotine, singing the Marian hymn \u201cSalve regina.\u201d At least that\u2019s how it\u2019s usually done. You can decide whether this production\u2019s novel realization of the scene works. I found it more confusing than convincing. <\/p>\n
Details<\/p>\n
Repeats at 2 p.m. Nov. 9 and 7:30 p.m. Nov. 12 and 15 at Winspear Opera House, 2403 Flora St. $15 to $412. 214-443-1000, dallasopera.org.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Is there another opera as much about ideas as Dialogues of the Carmelites? Suffused with Christian themes, it\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41288,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5350,102,104,103,9088,5351],"class_list":{"0":"post-41287","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-classical-music","9":"tag-dallas","10":"tag-dallas-headlines","11":"tag-dallas-news","12":"tag-dallas-opera","13":"tag-performing-arts"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41287"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41287\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}