their appalling fear of the guillotine, and go to their deaths without flinching, confident in their salvation. This is an exchange of a kind, but not the exchange originally envisaged by Constance. Poulenc suffered a severe breakdown in the course of writing the Carmelites. Always hypochondriac, he was deeply affected by Bernanos’s play. He persuaded himself he had stomach cancer, despite his doctors’ assurances to the contrary. Then his travelling-salesman boyfriend, Lucien Roubert, suggested they split up, with the result that poor Poulenc went into a serious decline and spent the latter part of 1954 in a clinic. Premiered in 1957, in Italian at La Scala in January, then in French in Paris the following June with a famous cast, including Denise Duval, Régine Crespin, and Rita Gorr, Les Carmélites has down the years cast its spell not only on the public but on many of the great female singers of the age: Maria Ewing, Jessye Norman, Leontyne Price, Joan Sutherland,
Irmgard Seefried, Anneliese Rothenberger, Josephine Barstow, and Anja Silja have all returned to the work, attracted by its undemonstrative vocal presentation of powerful feelings, and a fascination with these extraordinarily brave people. Poulenc treats the voice with respect, and avoids histrionics or exaggeration. He knows the power of musical understatement. For the singers there may be few great vocal moments and no romantic passion, but the intense measured projection of the relationship of these women to their vows, to their order, to their sisters, and to their God, is the richer for its restraint. Dialogues des Carmélites has rarely failed to overwhelm its audience with its clear and deeply-touching presentation of the heights to which the human spirit can aspire. A movement in the Catholic Church is pressing for the canonisation of the sixteen Martyrs of Compiègne.
miCHAEL FONTES
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