When the name Francis Poulenc is mentioned, it is more often than not his playful, witty compositions that come to mind. Consequently, the French composer would appear far from the ideal choice to evoke the austere grandeur of the play by Georges Bernanos that bears the same title as his opera, Dialogues des Carmélites. Moreover, Poulenc seemed to take pleasure in confirming his reputation as a dilettante or at least as a purely instinctive musician by any number of provocative statements. His biographer, Renaud Machart, deemed four of them so significant that he even had them printed on the back cover of the study he devoted to the composer. They are as follows:
My canon is instinct.
I do not have any principles, and I take pride in it.
I do not have any system of writing, thank God! System equals gimmicks.
Inspiration is a mysterious thing that is better left unexplained.
On listening closely to the music he created for Dialogues, however, one is convinced that Poulenc was every bit equal to the challenge. As Gilles Tromp admirably put it, “associating the emotional power of music with human speech, the opera lends itself ideally to the expression of interiority.”
At first glance, the text by Bernanos would not seem to provide the perfect raw material for an opera. It deals with the plight of a group of Carmelite nuns caught up in the frenzy of the French Revolution, dwelling on their individual and collective crises of conscience. But acting as his own librettist, Poulenc zeroed in on the immense dramatic potential the play contains and exploited it to the full, from the agitated orchestral passage introducing the first act to the overwhelming Salve Regina in the concluding scene, which the nuns intone as they march towards the scaffold. Indeed, one could argue that the composer’s libretto packs a greater wallop than Bernanos’ play since the author tends to dilute the dramatic tension of his text by including scenes having very little or nothing to do with the central theme, namely, the transfer of divine grace. It is not necessary to be a fervent Catholic in addition to an avid opera-goer to appreciate the impact this theme makes in the hands of a librettist and composer as gifted as Poulenc. In Dialogues des Carmélites the transfer of divine grace acquires an intensely poetic dimension that, paradoxically, makes it very believable once the audience has accepted loyally the terms of the composer’s imaginary world. I would like to examine this theme with you. I believe it confers on the opera its very powerful organic unity.
In Catholic theology, there is a theory according to which all saints, both living and dead, form a spiritual community enabling them to intercede for one another as well as for sinners. Bernanos, and Poulenc with him, go one step further. For them, the transfer of grace can manifest itself as an exchange of destinies and deaths. This is what occurs between the old Prioress, Mme de Croissy, and the young novice, Blanche. Mme de Croissy dies half-crazed with fear instead of having the dignified death for which she had been preparing all her life. Far from being an injustice, the degrading death the old Prioress suffers represents a sacrifice she makes in favour of Blanche. Mme de Croissy has assumed the fear of the young woman and the kind of death the latter would have otherwise endured. The agony the old Prioress felt during her last moments on earth was not really hers but the one Blanche would have experienced at some point in the future. Because Mme de Croissy sacrificed her edifying death to save the soul of the frightened novice, the latter will one day face her own with unswerving courage and serenity. As Sister Constance states with simple eloquence, “We do not die for ourselves alone, but for one another, or sometimes even one in place of the other.” It happens in the opera as well as in the play that this transfer of grace takes place within the context of the French Revolution. Without minimizing its importance in the lives of their protagonists, Bernanos and Poulenc used this cataclysm of history as a catalyst to accelerate the working of the communion of saints and give it a tangible form.
The opera traces, then, the converse spiritual trajectories of its two most important protagonists, Mme de Croissy and Blanche. There are other major characters in Dialogues des Carmélites whose destinies interest or even move us deeply. But they point to the triumph of divine grace that occurs when Blanche, totally cleansed of her fear through the self-sacrifice of the aged Prioress, mounts the scaffold after all of the other Carmelite nuns, singing the Veni, creator. The trajectory of Mme de Croissy unfolds far more swiftly than does that of the young novice. When we meet the Mother Superior in the second scene of the first act, she is already very ill and knows she is living on borrowed time. The music she sings as well as the words she utters betray an all-pervading weariness and disillusionment which only her faith prevents from degenerating into despair. Here is a woman of mighty convictions and willpower who, in the evening of her existence, casts a sorrowful gaze on the human condition. The attentive listener can perceive in this very first appearance of Mme de Croissy the first faint stirrings of the anguish that will soon take possession of her.
During the course of the audience, she grants Blanche, the Prioress begins by deploring her inability to truly detach herself from her earthly existence. If only she could remove herself in spirit from her physical ailments and no longer feel humiliated by them! Then she issues a stern warning to the young woman about the danger of entertaining illusions concerning the life she will lead in a Carmelite convent. One does not enter the Order, she emphasizes, because one wants heroism to become more accessible. One must not expect the Order to make a person more humble and virtuous. In the struggle for perfection, succour can come from no person other than oneself, and not through mortification but through prayer. Despite her redoubtable strength of character, Mme deCroissy feels a genuine maternal tenderness for Blanche who, she senses intuitively, will face terrible ordeals in the future. This mysterious affinity is confirmed when the young woman informs her that she intends to take the Carmelite name of Sister Blanche of the Agony of Christ, a name the old Prioress had once contemplated for herself but did not have the courage to assume.
No sooner has a profound spiritual bond been established between the two women when Mme de Croissy, in the final hours of her existence, crumbles with a terrifying swiftness. It is as though this person of imposing stature, born as it were to exercise authority, is suddenly drained of all her moral energy in order to exorcise the fear of Blanche. The Prioress had thirty years as a Carmelite nun behind her, including 12 years as Mother Superior, and now everything she lived for is cancelled out. A visceral fear of death seizes her. It is so overpowering that she does not even try to hide it. She cries out her horror of the void, her sheer panic in the face of the unknown. Her sense of shame disappears. She exhibits her distress in full view of everyone. She calls into question the very mercy of God. The thread of her destiny seems to break for good when she dies her ignominious death. But far from having vanished, Mme de Croissy’s indomitable strength has been transmitted to Blanche without the latter being aware of it. It will sustain the frightened young woman miraculously at the very moment of her life when she will appear to have hit rock bottom with no hope of ever rising again.
The rest of the opera, then, from the second act onward, follows Blanche’s descent into hell until the final, triumphant moment before her death when she is redeemed. In the very first scene of the opera, Blanche’s father, the Marquis de la Force, and her brother refer to the congenital fear with which the young woman seems afflicted. For them, it is the result of her premature birth precipitated by the alarm the girl’s late mother experienced when the carriage in which she was riding was nearly overturned by an angry mob. All through the second and third acts, this crippling emotion hangs over Blanche like a curse. Her actions and reactions bear out the prediction made by the very clairvoyant Mme de Croissy that what God would put to the test in the young woman would not be her strength but her weakness. While watching over the body of Mme de Croissy with Sister Constance, Blanche is gripped by panic the moment she is left to pray alone. She is loath to acknowledge, as her brother the Chevalier de la Force astutely remarks, that her cloistered life has not really made her a stronger person but has simply anaesthetized her fear. At the end of the second act, when the revolutionary mob suddenly breaks into the savage chant “Ah! Çaira, ça ira!, a terror-stricken Blanche drops the statue of the Infant Jesus Mother Jeanne had given her as one would to console a frightened child.
In the third act, Blanche flees the convent after she as well as all of the other nuns have pronounced the vow of martyrdom. Hoping to find protection from the Reign of Terror through anonymity, Blanche descends even further into degradation when she returns to her family home in Paris to serve as a scullery wench for her former servants. She resists Mother Marie’s exhortations to return to the convent in Compiègne, and sinks to the nadir of cowardice when, like St. Peter renouncing Christ, she denies having had any relationship with her Carmelite sisters on learning that they have been condemned to die by the Revolutionary Tribunal.
The excruciating dilemma in which Blanche finds herself is both similar and dissimilar to the one Christ had to confront on the Mount of Olives. Faced with the knowledge of his imminent execution, he begged God to remove the cup of bitterness from him, yet submitted unconditionally to His will. Blanche shuns the cup, strives desperately to avoid doing God’s will, yet ends up drinking it to the bottom anyway. But once she swallows the brew of shame and despair, the miracle of faith occurs. Having gone to the very limit of self-detestation, Blanche empties her soul of the fear that had plagued her almost before her birth and opens it to the action of divine grace. Now all of the spiritual strength that had deserted Mmede Croissy in the hour of her death floods Blanche, investing her with a fearlessness and radiant joy that impresses even the bloodthirsty mob. When Sister Constance had predicted in the first act that she and Blanche would die together at a young age, Blanche was absolutely horrified, even going so far as to accuse Constance of demonic pride for wanting martyrdom. Now she brings succour to the latter as they ascend to the guillotine one after the other.
Although Poulenc placed Blanche and Mme de Croissy at the dramatic and spiritual centre of Dialogues des Carmélites, he nevertheless orchestrated the theme of the transfer of grace on several other registers as well through the second Prioress, Mme Lidoine, MotherMarie de l’Incarnation and Sister Constance. Just as the first Prioress serves as a spiritual powerhouse to redeem Blanche, the second Prioress infuses her unwavering, vital faith into the nuns who have been entrusted to her care. There is one major difference in the actions they exert, however. Mme de Croissy saves Blanche beyond death, as though the virtues she had embodied during her lifetime were waiting for the most appropriate moment to take on another mortal form. Mme Lidoine transmits her unshakeable strength to her fellow nuns as they stand in the shadow of death itself, waiting in the Conciergerie in Paris for the Revolutionary Tribunal to pronounce its inevitable edict. She expresses at the end of her life the same reservations she had felt earlier about the vow of martyrdom that Mother Marie de l’Incarnation had incited the nuns to take during her absence but magnanimously assumes full responsibility for the vow while attributing the merit of it to the other Carmelites under her care.
As they await their execution she comforts her charges in soaring phrases that envelop them in an immense wave of maternal love. In sharp contrast to this wise, humble and compassionate woman, Mother Marie de l’Incarnation, the embodiment of overweening pride and authoritarianism, seems devoid of divine grace. Moreover, she receives the worst possible punishment that could be meted out to as exalted a religious spirit as herself. She is denied the glory of martyrdom. In this respect, she stands in opposition to yet another Carmelite, Sister Constance. The latter does not need to receive a transfusion of divine grace. She possesses it from the very start because of her transparency and humility.
The final scene of the opera is the point where the grace of God touches all these women and makes their destinies converge. Here they march to the scaffold singing the very moving Salve Regina. In this, one of the most affecting moments in all opera—for me, at least—it must be acknowledged that Poulenc conveys the Carmelites’ religious fervour with a sweep and intensity that music alone can generate. He even manages to incorporate into this prayer the swishing of the blade of the guillotine as it falls brutally on one innocent victim after another. And so reverent is their singing that even when each of their voices is silenced in turn, the faith they proclaim in God’s infinite love as they accept martyrdom appears to prevail over the cruelty of their executioners.
Robert Carsen’s boldly imaginative staging of this opera emphasizes this triumph of love and hope over despair and death. He has eschewed most of the symbols referring to the Christian faith because these could easily degenerate into kitsch. Instead, he has created a spiritual space in which the Carmelite nuns live and eventually resolve their conflicts. And in the final scene, he has wisely de-emphasized the gruesomeness of the nuns’ execution by insisting on their ascension towards eternal light. In other words, he has provided the perfect visual complement to the Salve Regina.
The Salve Regina is but one instance of the gift Poulenc possesses of giving tangible form through his music to the emotional and spiritual propulsion of the drama. This talent can be admired in many passages within Dialogues des Carmélites, but perhaps can be best appreciated in an ostinato pattern of repeated pairs of quavers. In plain language, the term simply means a persistent phrase or rhythm that is repeated through all or part of a piece. The pattern manifests itself for the first time at the end of Act I, when Mme de Croissy suffers her agonizing death. It returns as the underpinning for the whole scene of the scaffold, as though to emphasize that it was the old Prioress’s sublime sacrifice that now makes possible Blanche’s ineffable serenity. Perhaps, as Roger Nichols suggests, the anxious Poulenc had recourse to this pattern in order to persuade himself that his heroine’s unswerving courage in the face of death would prefigure his own. I do not know the circumstances in which the French composer passed away. I do, however, know how the writer of the original text, Georges Bernanos faced the supreme trial. His steadfastness very much resembled that of the Carmelite nuns in his own play as well as in Poulenc’s magnificent opera. Sensing that the end was near, he said gently to friends and family surrounding him the following words that always bring tears to my eyes: “You can leave me now. I’m not afraid.”
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