Opera The Dialogues of the Carmelites
Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites is significant as one of the most esteemed operas of the 20th century. It is a work that addresses many of the core questions of human existence, which gives it a broad appeal for audiences around the world. The story of the Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne presses those who witness the opera to ask themselves questions about life and death, the relationship between politics and violence, anxiety, faith, and other such themes that invite viewers to confront both the power and the limitations of our experience as human beings. The opera, even with its religious and spiritual dimensions, has been of academic interest not only to theologians, but also to scholars in a variety of disciplines, including psychology.
An article titled “The impact of a religious opera on a secular audience: The existential and religious importance of art” was published by the scholars Hans Alma and T. Hetty Zock in the Netherlands during the early 2000s. The article presents a psychological study that exemplifies the manner in which the Dialogues is a work that speaks to all people, whether they hold religious beliefs or not. The article contains an empirical study of the impact of the opera on viewers in Amsterdam in 2002. They found that, “art can make people sensitive to existential questions and to a broad spirituality,” in the particular sense that it opens them to “transcendence” (Alma, 127). Relying on varied philosophical sources, such as John Dewey and Hans Gadamer, the authors begin by sketching the general import of art in the human experience, as well as the ways in which art/aesthetics overlap with religion/transcendence. The authors note that despite the opera’s religious genesis and intent, it is still widely celebrated even among secular audiences. They explain that the opera is “existential” in that it touches upon the four core aspects of traditional existentialist philosophy: death, freedom, isolation, and meaninglessness. The opera addresses death “in the fear of death and dying of the protagonist Blanche, the prioress and finally all the nuns” and freedom “in the issue of making the right choice, becoming who you are and who God wants you to be, and in the dilemma of establishing yourself vs. surrendering to God”. Likewise, it explores isolation “in the loneliness of the anxious Blanche, the dying prioress, and the emphasis on dying together” and meaninglessness “in the search for meaning in martyrdom, in not living up to one’s identity and ideals” (129). The play is explicitly religious and Roman Catholic, and yet, precisely as such, it presents universal existential themes that are recognizable to and understood by the vast majority of those who see the opera.
Francis Poulenc, who composed The Dialogues of the Carmelites, was interested in various forms of art throughout his life, often finding inspiration for his operatic works in other mediums, such as paintings and literature. In fact, Poulenc was attracted to Georges Bernanos’ play about the martyrs of Compiegne and wished to turn it into an opera in part due to Bernanos’ own blending of religion and art in his writings. The Dialogues, which narrates a profound tragedy within the particular historical context of the French Revolution, grew out of Poulenc’s own personal crises of severe depression and the loss of a loved one. Interestingly, it was in the context of these sufferings that Poulenc found comfort and support through correspondence with members of the Carmelite Order in the United States and in France. Poulenc’s own experiences of suffering and the impact of art on his compositions enhance the existential character of the opera, as it is thus imbued with his own existential dilemmas and triumphs.
With all of the above in mind, the authors conducted an empirical study of the impact of The Dialogues of the Carmelites on a secular audience. They surveyed audience members by questionnaire, interviewed the director and some of the actors, and studied reviews of the performance. They sought to discover, “Does this religious-existential opera bring a modern secularized opera-audience into contact with religious meaning?” (133). The words most commonly selected out of a list of sixteen with which audience members could describe the opera were “moving” and “meaningful” (134). They also asked open-endedly what was most appealing about the opera. The most common non-religious answers included things like not being afraid of death, the importance of friendship, the struggle to hold true to one’s values, and so forth. The authors of the article found that these non-religious answers all ended up being “religious” in the broader existential sense described in the foregrounding of their study. Even the performers themselves cited being able to move audiences as one of the more rewarding aspects of being involved in the opera. They noted that after the guillotine falls at the end of the performance, it sometimes took audiences a while to begin to applaud, as they needed time to process what they had just apprehended. Audience members and performers alike emphasized the opera’s ability to press us to ponder life and death, as well as the importance of the choices we make in between. The vast majority of respondents felt they could empathize with the characters and the opera as a whole. Alma and Zock found that while religious people could easily identify the theological themes within the opera, the presence of such themes did not deter secular audience members from appreciating the performance and engaging with the existential questions it poses. In other words, in matters of art and aesthetics, religiosity and Catholicity are not barriers. In fact, they are the very aspects of the opera that have the power to give art universal human appeal.
In their concluding remarks, the authors asserted that “for the majority of the respondents, the opera fits in with a religious sensitivity in the broader sense of the word, connected with the awareness of human finitude and transcendence” (139). Moreover, the aesthetic and existential aspects of the opera were shown to give The Dialogues of the Carmelites a broad appeal and did not constitute something that limited the opera’s reach. The study found that Poulenc’s artistic expression of the historical narrative of the Carmelite martyrs of Compiegne is evocative and thought-provoking. The Dialogues is a timeless story that asks each of us to grapple with the inseparable mixture of fragility and strength that is intrinsic to being human.