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Poulenc: Dialogues Des Carmelites / Nagano, Dubosc, Van Dam


Release Date: 01/19/1993 
Label:  Virgin Classics   Catalog #: 59227   Spars Code: DDD 
Composer:  Francis Poulenc
Performer:  Georges Gautier,  Michel Sénéchal,  Catherine Dubosc,  Martine Dupuy,   ... 
Conductor:  Kent Nagano
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Lyon Opera Orchestra,  Lyon Opera Chorus,  London Chorus
Number of Discs: 2 
Recorded in: Stereo 
Length: 2 Hours 32 Mins. 

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This CD is reissued by ArkivMusic.

Notes and Editorial Reviews

Anyone interested in the best of 20-century opera and—more important—wants to share in a deeply moving experience should have this set.

Kent Nagano and his Lyon forces may well follow their GRAMOPHONE Award-winning success of 1990—The love for three oranges—with another for this dedicated achievement. Once more the recording was made after a stage production in their home house. In this case they are performing one of only half a dozen or so great operas written since the war (most of the rest are by Britten or Tippett). Poulenc's masterpiece has already stood the test of 35 years; if it continues to be interpreted as lovingly as here, it may well become a repertory piece in the future. Its only previous recording (EMI Read more 1958) followed the first performances in France. That was until recently available on CD (7/88) but, as with so many other irreplaceable discs in their catalogue, EMI have already capriciously deleted it. What a way for a supposedly responsible company to behave before its store of treasure!

Pierre Dervaux, who died earlier this year, was the conductor there and Nagano has very sensibly followed his predecessor's authoritative reading, one that discloses the piece's interior beauty and exterior skill in depicting the world of the Carmelite order as it faces up to the trials and tribulations of the French Revolution. As Roger Nichols writes in his comprehensive introduction to the new set, the composer succeeded in articulating the predicament of "fairly ordinary women caught up in an extraordinary destiny". He did so in music that depends for its unity on recurring motifs and on a setting of the text that leans heavily on Debussy's and his own song-writing idioms: some of the solos could almost be abstracted as songs in themselves. Over and above the technical achievement, Poulenc evokes a convincing sound-world of its own (a sine qua non for any great opera) and makes his audience believe, as he obviously did, in its characters, in their everyday martyrdom and what leads to it.

Nagano has unerringly responded to its sombre, elevated mood, and also realized the useful contrast provided, in just the right places, of male voices. Only once or twice, as for instance in the scene where Blanche's brother tries to persuade her to leave her retreat for the sake of her own safety, did I feel that Nagano missed an extra touch of urgency achieved by Dervaux, but that may have something to do with the old bugbear among modern producers of putting too much space around voices and instruments thus losing the immediacy that used to be achieved by less sophisticated means.

I was frankly astonished—and pleased—to find that the Francophone singers here were virtually on a par with their renowned predecessors. As is a tradition in this piece, a former interpreter of one of the younger characters here becomes the Old Prioress; thus Rita Gorr, Dervaux's Mere Marie, is here Madame de Croissy, and she projects the ailing woman's final agonies with superb intensity and a voice little touched by time, except at the top. The unyielding Mere Marie is here taken by that underrated, unfailingly musical mezzo, Martine Dupuy, singing with firm tone and magisterial authority rightly tempered by a good heart. Crespin, more recently an Old Prioress at Covent Garden, was Dervaux's Madame Lidoine, the new Prioress. For Nagano, Yakar almost but not quite equals her predecessor's exceptionally eloquent assumption, singing her two extended solos with refined and unaffected diction.

More important than any of these is Sister Blanche. The opera is as much about her personal torments and eventual saving as anything else. A neurotic, fantasizing girl, she seeks comfort in the convent but never quite comes to terms with its rigours of mind and body. Poulenc wrote it for Denise Duval, who took the role for Dervaux. Happily Catherine Dubose matches Duval in tone and accent, and goes one better in refined phrasing, as at "la pauvre petite victime de Sa Divine MajestC" in Act 2. Only a singer who has taken the role on stage can provide that kind of conviction. As her light-hearted companion, Sister Constance, Brigitte Fournier is delightfully airy and eager just right.

The male characters have been cast, to say the least, from strength. Van Dam launches the opera strongly with his purposeful, fatherly Marquis and Viala quite avoids the bleating of his EMI counterpart as the Chevalier, Blanche's brother. Veteran Michel SénCchal is ideally cast as the sympathetic Chaplain and Le Roux is suitably implacable as the accusing Gaoler.

The work is given absolutely complete here (the EMI employs the four optional cuts), including the short interlude of melodrama before the finale. There is a judicious attempt at imitating stage action, and a well-balanced distribution of the characters. In spite of my earlier Stricture, this highly recommendable version has, of course, a far wider range of dynamics than its EMI predecessor. Anyone interested in the best of twentiethcentury opera and—more important—wants to share in a deeply moving experience should have this set.

-- Gramophone [9/1992]
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Works on This Recording

1. Dialogues des carmélites by Francis Poulenc
Performer:  Georges Gautier (Tenor), Michel Sénéchal (Tenor), Catherine Dubosc (Soprano),
Martine Dupuy (Mezzo Soprano), Rita Gorr (Mezzo Soprano), Jean-Luc Viala (Tenor),
Rachel Yakar (Soprano), Brigitte Fournier (Soprano), Marie Boyer (Mezzo Soprano),
José Van Dam (Baritone), Hélène Perraguin (Soprano), François Le Roux (Baritone),
Yves Bisson (Baritone), Vincent le Texier (Bass Baritone), Eric Freulon (Baritone),
Emilio Roman (Bass), Nicole Biondi (Voice), Mireille Antoine (Voice),
Georges Bouquet (Voice)
Conductor:  Kent Nagano
Orchestra/Ensemble:  Lyon Opera Orchestra,  Lyon Opera Chorus,  London Chorus
Period: 20th Century 
Written: 1953-1956; France 
 Length: 152 Minutes 12 Secs. 
Language: French 

Sound Samples

Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 1: Où est Blanche? (Le Chevalier)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 1: Les soldats surviennent à temps (Le Marquis)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 1: Blanche, votre frère avait grand'hâte de vous revoir (Le Marquis)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 1: Son imagination va toujours d'un extrême à l'autre (Le Marquis)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 1: Je vois qu'il n'y a heureusement rien de grave (Le Marquis)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 1: Mon enfant chérie (Le Marquis)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 2: Prélude
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 2: N'allez pas croire que ce fauteuil (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 2: Je vois que les sévérités de notre Règle (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 2: Ma fille, les bonnes gens se demandent (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 2: Vous pleurez? (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 3: Prélude
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 3: Encore ces maudites fèves! (Constance)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 3: Vous n'avez pas honte de parler ainsi (Blanche)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 3: Oh! Soeur Blanche (Constance)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 4: Prélude
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 4: Ayez la bonté de relever ce coussin (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 4: Je trouve que Blanche de la Force tarde beaucoup! (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 4: Relevez-vous, ma fille (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 4: Dieu se glorifie dans ses saints (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 4: Monsieur Javelinot, je vous prie de me donner (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 4: Mère Marie de l'Incarnation! Mère Marie (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 1, Tableau 4: La Révérende Mère veut que vous approchiez (Mère Marie)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 1: Qui Lazarum resuscitasti a monumento foetidum (Constance)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 1: Que faites-vous? (Mère Marie)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Interlude 1: Soeur Blanche, je trouve notre croix (Constance)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Interlude 1: Pensez à la mort de notre chère Mère (Constance)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 2: Mes chères filles (La nouvelle Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 2: Mes Soeurs, sa Révérence vient de nous dire (Mère Marie)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Interlude 2: Que se passe-t'il? (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 3: Prélude
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 3: Pourquoi vous tenez-vous ainsi? (Le Chevalier)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 3: Dans des temps comme ceux-ci (Le Chevalier)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 3: Oh! ne me quittez pas sur un adieu de fâcherie! (Blanche)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 3: Remettez-vous. Soeur Blanche (Mère Marie)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 4: Prélude
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 4: Mes chères filles (L'Aumônier)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 4: Qu'allez-vous devenir? (Blanche)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 4: On a tiré la clochette! (Soeur Constance)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 4: Où sont les religieuses? (Premier commissaire)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 2, Tableau 4: Mes soeurs, notre Révérende Mère viendra bientôt (Mère Jeanne)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 1: Parlez-leur, mon Père (Mère Marie)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 1: Il y a une seule opposition (Mère Marie)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Interlude 1: Citoyennes, nous vous félicitons (Premier officier)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Interlude 1: Soeur Gérald, il faut absolument prévenir ce prêtre (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 2: Prélude
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 2: C'est vous (Blanche)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 2: Soeur Blanche de l'Agonie du Christ! (Mère Marie)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Interlude 2: Prélude
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Interlude 2: M'est avis que nous ne sommes point (Première vielle)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 3: Mes filles, voilà que s'achève (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 3: Le Tribunal révolutionnaire (Le Geôlier)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 3: Mes filles, j'ai désiré de tout mon coeur (La Prieure)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Interlude 3: Elles sont condamnées à mort (L'Aumônier)
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 4: Prélude
Dialogues des Carmelites, Acte 3, Tableau 4: Salve Regina (Les Carmélites)

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