Dialogues des Carmélites, Guildhall, 5 March 2018

Silk Street Theatre

Chevalier de la Force, First Commissary – Eduard Mas Bacardit

Marquis de la Force – Jake Muffett

Blanche de la Force – Lucy Anderson

Thierry, Second Commissary, M. Javelinot, Gaoler – Bertie Watson

Prioress, Mother Jeanne – Georgia Mae Bishop

Sister Constance – Claire Lees

Mother Marie – Emily Kyte

Second Prioress – Michelle Alexander

Carmelites – Eva Gheorghiu, Myramae Meneses, Victoria Li, Alice Girle, Siân Dicker, Ana Marafona, Isabelle Peters, Catherine White, Meriel Cunningham, Natalie Davies, Anne Reilly

Sister Mathilde – Lucy McAuley

Chaplain – Daniel Mullaney

Martin Lloyd-Evans (director)

takis (designs)

Robbie Butler (lighting)

Orchestra and Chorus of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama

Dominic Wheeler (conductor)

The Guildhall’s termly opera offerings have long tended to be more adventurous than those of the Royal Academy or Royal College when it comes to repertoire. In June, we shall have the mouthwatering prospect of a double-bill of Hindemith’s last opera, The Long Christmas Dinner, and Lennox Berkeley’s A Dinner Engagement. Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites is probably as mainstream as I have heard here, with the exception of a fine Marriage of Figaro in 2013. I am not sure that the performance I heard marked the school’s greatest achievement, but there was nevertheless much to admire – and yes, the final scene did what it must when the nuns came before the guillotine, bringing tears to my eyes and a sense of redemption through grace.

The first act in particular seemed somewhat unsettled, the gentle – often deceptively so – flow of Poulenc’s orchestral writing often seeming to elude conductor Dominic Wheeler, and the cast seeming to have been encouraged to perform in a fashion more suited to Italian verismo. French opera more often than not presents a difficulty: not just in the language but in the style too. Perhaps the brashness of the orchestral sound and some decidedly odd balances were as much a matter of the difficult Silk Street acoustic as of anything else. Stravinsky came to mind, quite rightly, but it did not always seem quite the right Stravinsky, and he certainly would have required greater precision too. Fortunately, matters improved considerably in the second and still more the third acts: much better than the other way around! And it was good to have opportunity to see and to hear the opera in its proper three acts, rather than, as often the case, having a break part way through the second.

Martin Lloyd-Evans’s production worked well enough, although the balance or perhaps even opposition between naturalism and something more minimalistic, even symbolic, sometimes seemed arbitrary rather than productive. I have nothing against the opera being set when it ‘should’ be, but the danger then can be that it then comes to seem to be ‘about’ the French Revolution, which it really is not. There were some beautiful costumes from takis to look at. More to the point, his relatively sparse set designs achieved a good deal by suggestion – as well as possessing an aesthetic appeal of their own. A Carmelite convent is surely not in any case intended to be lavish. The true theme of the opera, Divine Grace, shone through just enough, if perhaps less consistently than it might have done.

The young cast had much to recommend it. Perhaps rather oddly, given their distinctly lesser roles, the men foten stood out as much as the women, Daniel Mullaney’s Chaplain and Eduard Mas Bacardi’s Chevalier and First Commissary both offering finely sung, dramatically considered performances. Perhaps the starring role on this occasion was that of Emily Kyte’s Mother Marie. We were reminded more than once, as much through acting as through vocal means, that not only does the opera has its roots in her telling of the story, but of her especially problematical role in the narrative. Lucy Anderson’s Blanche proved a little vocally wayward to start with, but once settled, proved well able to engage our sympathies. A nicely contrasted, yet strangely complementary, pair of prioresses, Old and New, came our way from Georgia Mae Bishop and Michelle Alexander. Choral scenes were well directed, scenically and musically, offering the necessary sense of a threatening and, yes, revolutionary backdrop.

Dialogues des Carmélites, Royal Opera, 2 June 2014

Images: Stephen Cummiskey/Royal Opera House

 

 

Royal Opera House

Chevalier de la Force – Yann Beuron

Marquis de la Force – Sir Thomas Allen

Blanche de la Force – Sally Matthews

Thierry – Neil Gillespie

Mme de Croissy – Deborah Polaski

Sister Constance – Anna Prohaska

Mother Marie – Sophie Koch

M. Javelinot – John Bernays

Mme Lidoine – Emma Bell

Carmelites – Yvonne Barclay, Katy Batho, Tamsin Coombs, Eileen Hamilton, Anne Osborne, Deborah Peake Jones, Louise Armit, Andrea Hazell, Elizabeth Key, Kate McCarney, Deborah Pearce

Sister Mathilde – Catherine Carby

Mother Jeanne – Elizabeth Sikora

Chaplain – Alan Oke

First Commissary – David Butt Philip

Second Commissary – Michel de Souza

Officer – Ashley Riches

Gaoler – Craig Smith

Robert Carsen (director)

Michael Levine (set designs)

Falk Bauer (costumes)

Jean Kalman (lighting)

Philippe Giradeau (movement)

Royal Opera Chorus (chorus master: Stephen Westrop)
Orchestra of the Royal Opera House
Sir Simon Rattle (conductor)

 

This was a performance whose intensity increased almost immeasurably as the evening went on. That seemed to be as much a matter of the production as the conducting, of the singing as the orchestral playing, although there were, of course, exceptions. At any rate, the final scene proved devastating in its combination of abstraction and directness, the amplified (electronic?) guillotine notwithstanding. Robert Carsen’s staging, and in this case especially Philippe Giradeau’s movement, exemplary throughout, frame the action simply and without hysteria, as the equally exemplary ensemble thins out one by one – until the appearance of Blanche, to whom Constance reaches out from afar, and then… Yes, the opera veers dangerously close to sentimentality, and perhaps in some places crosses that boundary, but the frisson experienced near that boundary is part, though only part, of what Poulenc is about. Musically, the scene is not quite reducible to the ghost of Œdipus Rex, haunted by an earlier ghost of Gounod; it is, indeed, its own unforgettable self. And the other influences, Puccini, Mussorgsky, and Debussy amongst them, never overpower the ‘dialogues’ of the title, with their roots in a very French understanding of plainsong and religious life. It was not only in the final scene that music, staging, and performance came together very well indeed, but it was perhaps the finest example and of course the climax.

 

Mme de Croissy (Deborah Polaski) and Blanche (Sally Matthews)

If only Carsen’s understandable interest in the revolutionary crowd did not overpower some of the other scenes, this would be a great staging indeed; as it stands, Carsen’s divided attention seems to run along the lines of much (mis-)understanding of the opera. I do not wish to carp about the role played by the volunteer Community Ensemble, whose direction and performance deeply impressed, and whose achievement, some of its participants having experienced homelessness, prison, and long-term unemployment, can hardly fail to move and to cheer. But Carsen’s presentation tends to suggest that the opera is more ‘about’ the French Revolution than it really is. This is a drama about Divine Grace, a truth at least as often forgotten, or overlooked, as the similar truth about Parsifal, a work with which Poulenc’s opera would otherwise have little or nothing in common. There are moments, nevertheless, when the ensemble works wonders, perhaps above all acting as a human – or inhuman? – dividing line between Blanche and her brother, the Chevalier, when he visits her in the convent. Still, the loss is perhaps a price worth paying for the redemptive involvement and prospects afforded to members of the ensemble, who have also been invited to take part in a careers support programme by the Royal Opera House and its partner organisations (Streetwise Opera, Synergy Theatre Project, the Department for Work and Pensions, and the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama).

Mother Marie (Sophie Koch) at the centre

Sir Simon Rattle’s role in proceedings was impressive too – as one might expect from this conductor in French music. Rattle’s leadership of the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, generally on very good form itself, refused to sentimentalise, taking the opera faster than some may have wished, but hardly offensively so and quite without the mannerisms that so often disfigure his readings of the ‘central’ Austro-German symphonic repertoire. And the big moments had great punch, the unanimity of orchestral and vocal ensemble alike quite remarkable. Poulenc once remarked that he did not want his music to be analysed but to loved; perhaps a better way to love it, though, is to accord it the dignity of some degree of analytical, as well as dramatic, thought.



Constance (Anna Prohaska) and other Carmelites

 

Sally Matthews’s performance of the central role was one which improved almost out of recognition as the evening went on. The first scene was troubled by thick vibrato and less than convincing French. It would be vain to contend that Matthews’s French diction or style ever truly convinced, but it became possible to leave to one side one’s doubts, as her dramatic sincerity won one over. Anna Prohaska made a wonderful foil as Constance: vivacious, pure and clean of tone, yet full of fun. In short, she simply ‘lived’ the character, convincing us that this was how she must be; it would be a pity if we were not one day to hear her Blanche. Deborah Polaski’s Old Prioress impressed through sheer strength of personality, even if, again, her French was far from beyond reproach. Her Erwartung did not seem so very far away at the end of the first act. Emma Bell was sensational as her replacement, ringing as true and clear as I have ever heard; indeed, this was the finest performance I have heard from her. Equally distinguished was Sophie Koch’s Mother Marie: a tricky, yet crucial role. Her inner demons and ultimate humanity were powerfully portrayed in a reading of vocal distinction too. Yann Beuron’s Chevalier de la Force made a headstrong and imploring mark, whilst Alan Oke captured better than I had previously encountered the ambivalent role of the Chaplain. Indeed, pretty much every one of the smaller roles was well taken, and the choral singing could hardly be faulted either. This was, then, whatever quibbles one might have had concerning aspects of Carsen’s production and the French diction, an excellent company effort, and should be lauded as such.