The revolutionists run in with flags flying - just to do it and the mob in Act III charges to the footlights to glare at us as if auditioning for Les Misérables. Hildegard Bechtler's rotating walls are minimalist and without atmosphere.

Zambello does Dialogues no favors throughout. Thank God, we've got Poulenc's exquisite music and unfailing dramatic instinct to save the day. It's so literal, the scene's power is quashed in half. When the nuns step in they are bathed in redemption's golden light, like contestants in some celestial game show. One of the mob opens a panel in the curved wall to reveal a gilded box at the top of the platform.

As they say in opera, Gangbusters.ĭirector Francesca Zambello fumbles this iconic scene with a too quiet guillotine and cheesy set design.

There is a deafening silence until the orchestra takes up a gentle prayer as the curtain falls in benediction. Finally, only one singer is left, Sister Blanche, until she is cut off mid-syllable. They sing a plaintive and heavenly “Salve Regina,” as each is killed – offstage – to the swish and thud of the blade's fall. The opera is renowned for this ultra-dramatic final scene.Īida has its tomb in which the lovers suffocate Rheingold has its rainbow bridge with wailing mermaids Boheme has its romantic death of Mimi Tosca jumps off the parapets of Castel Sant'Angelo Butterfly ends in hare-kiri Salome, after kissing the dead lips of John the Baptist, is killed by the soldiers of Herod Tsar Boris Godunov goes mad and topples down the palace staircase.īut nothing in all opera beats the nuns' procession up the steps to kiss Madame Guillotine. This is no spoiler since after the stunning La Scala world premiere in 1957 no one talked of anything else. In one of opera's most powerful and haunted finales, 16 nuns are guillotined in Francis Poulenc's remarkable Dialogues of the Carmelites.

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