Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites has one of the most heart-stopping endings in all opera. Sixteen Carmelite nuns, refusing to abandon their faith, mount the scaffold to be guillotined one by one, singing the Salve Regina as they go.
Poulenc’s action, based on a true story, is set during the ferment of the French Revolution, the nuns unequivocally representing the persecution of the church during the Reign of Terror. Barrie Kosky’s enthralling new production begins in 18th-century costume but ends in the modern era. In between, the nuns wear timeless black tunics and religious iconography is absent. He thus universalises the issues, doing no violence to the original, but extrapolating themes that chime again and again with our own experience.
