Don't Mention the French Revolution

Antonacci chills the blood as the Old Prioress, Kunde astonishes with a late-career Chénier

The Old Prioress’s funeral: Emma Dante’s staging of Dialogues des Carmélites at La Fenice.

This article is an adaptation and expansion of my review of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites which appeared in Jan Geisbusch’s German translation on Oper! Magazin’s website. The Carmélites section appears by kind permission of the editor, Dr. Ulrich Ruhnke

At first sight, the opportunity to write about two operas sharing a similar historical setting, the ‘Terror’ in late 18th Century Paris seemed an attractive prospect, given that Dialogues des Carmélites and Andrea Chénier have been receiving concurrent performances in northern Italy. In the event, neither production gave the French Revolution much of a look-in.

At Venice’s Teatro La Fenice, Poulenc’s Carmélites made its local debut in a visually striking production by Emma Dante, which she originally staged three years ago in Rome. Under Frédéric Chaslin’s idiomatic baton, only Anna Caterina Antonacci survives from the Rome cast. Now 64 years old, with a remarkable career comprising an astonishing variety of both soprano and mezzo roles, she took centre-stage as a character who, despite disappearing at the end of the first act, establishes the unsettling atmosphere with a vision of the terrible fate awaiting her fellow nuns in the final scene. Antonacci remains one of opera’s most charismatic leading ladies, even if her voice now misses some of its former bloom. As the severe Mme de Croissy, unable herself to live up to the standards of the règle she ruthlessly imposes on her subordinates, Antonacci made her presence felt throughout.