UNL Opera will present four performances of Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites.”
Performances are 2 p.m. Oct. 27; 7:30 p.m. Oct. 29; 7:30 p.m. Nov. 1; and 2 p.m. Nov. 3. All performances are in Howell Theatre, located on the first floor of the Temple Building at 12th and R streets in Lincoln.
Tickets are $20 regular and $10 seniors/students and are available online.
Experience Poulenc’s stark and revelatory drama about the young Blanche de la Force’s pursuit of refuge in her faith as she struggles to tame her overwrought fears of the world. Based on actual events, this profound opera recounts the story of a group of Carmelite nuns caught in the maelstrom of the French Revolution.
Glenn Korff School of Music piano accompanist Michael Cotton is serving as the musical director for the opera and completed a new English translation of the opera’s vocal and piano arrangement.
“I am so grateful to have Michael Cotton as our musical director for this production. I can’t imagine having done this without his beautiful and articulate adaptation of the text; his magnificent and emotionally compelling musical leadership from the piano; and his insightful spirit that continually leads us all to a deeper understanding of this very great work,” said William Shomos, the Richard H. Larson Distinguished Professor of Music (Voice) and director of Opera.
Cotton said the music in Poulenc’s opera is unique.
“It’s beautiful. It’s powerful. Poulenc is an interesting composer because he didn’t really see a big divide between the sacred and the secular,” he said. “So there are passages in the opera that sound very much like a monastery or a cathedral. There are other passages that sound very much like a cabaret or a nightclub. There are other passages that sound like French folk song. He just takes very diverse, stylistic elements and filters them all through his own imagination, and it’s a very unique result.
Cotton said students are doing well with the difficult music.
“It’s not easy music,” he said. “Once you get it in your ear, it all makes sense. But initially, it can take some very unexpected turns of harmony and melody. They’re doing very, very well with it.”
The opera is sung in English with supertitles, but that was also Poulenc’s original intent, Cotton said.
“He wrote it in French, obviously, but he wanted it performed in the language of whatever country it was being performed in,” he said. “So it premiered at La Scala in Italian before it was done in Paris in French. And then when it went to London, it was done in English. So doing it in English is not a concession to any kind of linguistic weakness on anyone’s part. It is what Poulenc wanted. It makes it much easier, obviously, for the students to connect with what’s happening, and I think it will make it much easier for the audience to get involved.”
Cotton hopes audiences will be moved by the opera.
“At first glance, it looks like a very tragic opera,” he said. “But really whether you believe in the grace of God or just the innate nobility of the human spirit, it’s a testament to the triumph of that over these really dehumanizing, awful circumstances. It’s the triumph of courage over fear. Emotionally, it’s very, very powerful, but it’s also very thought-provoking in a lot of ways.”
Shomos said the music is “very Poulenc.”
“He continually goes back and forth between an almost austere soundscape of sacred piety and a music that is ravishingly sensuous and lush,” Shomos said. “In this way, we are always aware, even if subliminally, of the conflict, balance and integration of the human and the divine.”
“Dialogues” will be presented in Howell Theatre while Kimball Recital Hall continues to be renovated.