This Weekend: UT Opera Theatre Presents ‘Dialogues of the Carmelites’ at the Bijou

The University of Tennessee Opera Theatre is presenting Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites at the Bijou Theatre in a double-cast run of four performances—evening performances on Friday and Saturday evenings at 7:30 PM, April 25 and 26, and afternoon performances on Saturday and Sunday afternoons at 2:30 PM, April 26 and 27. Tickets are available online here or at the door. 

Because Poulenc had suggested that the opera be performed in the language of the producer’s host country, the opera’s world premiere took place in an Italian translation in January of 1957 at La Scala in Milan. The première of the original French version took place in Paris six months later. In three acts with 10 minute intermissions, the UTOT production will be sung in French with English supertitles.

The opera, set in 1789 and amidst the French Revolution, centers on a young member of an order of Carmelite nuns, the aristocratic Blanche de la Force, who struggles with a desire for mental peace in order to answer her life’s calling. Poulenc’s score reflects much of the composer’s personality.

As is UTOT’s usual casting scheme, major roles are double cast, divided between the evening performances and the matinee performances. 

Dialogues of the Carmelites will be the second production at UTOT for Interim Stage Director Scott Skiba. “It’s a wonderful opera,” offers Skiba, “and because it has numerous treble voice roles, it is often produced by educational institutions where soprano and mezzo voices are more numerous than tenor and bass voices.  … The roles are very challenging and require singing actors with great vocal stamina and the ability to maintain high level intensity for sustained periods of time.  UTOT is fortunate to have so many talent students up for the challenge!”

This is not Skiba’s first encounter with Dialogues. “I first worked on this opera in 2011 at Pittsburgh opera as assistant director in a beautiful production directed by Eric Einhorn, who had premiered the production at Austin Lyric Opera. The final scene when the Carmelite nuns approach the Guillotine with strength and power is one of the most moving moments in opera and I would argue in all of theater.  Eric did a wonderful job with the staging of the scene, and it had left an indelible mark on me such that when revisiting the opera for a production I was to direct in 2017, I was struggling to find a way to present the final scene in a way that was impactful yet different.  I was in Grand Rapids on a gig and stumbled across an installation of Mimmo Paladino’s “Sleepers.” I was struck by the imagery and that became the inspiration for how I composed the visual storytelling of the final scene.”

Skiba’s UTOT musical colleague is music director and conductor, Kevin Class, leading the UT Opera Orchestra.