Prom 31: Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites - 7 August 2023

[Master Jacques]

Do you think it was about money? She is married to a very rich man and must have considerable personal wealth of her own. It baffles me . Aspects is one of A L-W’s thinnest works . It was obvious from the paper planning stage that this Dialogue was going to be special . I wonder whether there was an artistic reason e.g. she didn’t like the role of Blanche ? The Aspects production was a bit of a flop wasn’t it ?

Who knows what the decision was about? It's worth flagging up that although she was playing only a supporting role in Aspects of Love, not the female lead, she did get good reviews.

Another possible aspect: she has been showing telltale traces of minor vocal decline - a certain fraying round the edges, a dulling of that trademark radiance - in the last few years, so it is quite possible that the role of Blanche didn't like her, rather than the other way round. Not that it's a specially hard 'sing', technically, compared with other roles in the opera: it was written for Duval, after all, who was all about dramatic rather than vocal virtuosity.

At all events, she missed out on her House's major triumph of the year, in favour of a musical revival which was largely greeted as a morally dubious fossil, by today's younger critics.

[Ein Heldenleben]

Who knows what the decision was about? It's worth flagging up that although she was playing only a supporting role in Aspects of Love, not the female lead, she did get good reviews.

Another possible aspect: she has been showing telltale traces of minor vocal decline - a certain fraying round the edges, a dulling of that trademark radiance - in the last few years, so it is quite possible that the role of Blanche didn't like her, rather than the other way round. Not that it's a specially hard 'sing', technically, compared with other roles in the opera: it was written for Duval, after all, who was all about dramatic rather than vocal virtuosity.

At all events, she missed out on her House's major triumph of the year, in favour of a musical revival which was largely greeted as a morally dubious fossil, by today's younger critics.

It doesn’t surprise me she got good reviews . Saw a Boheme pre lockdown (might have been a rehearsal at Covent Garden to be fair ) where she lit up a lacklustre performance from the moment she came on stage as Musetta. She has definitely got something .

[Maclintick]

Many have commented to me on how loud Oppenheimer is. One reason I won’t be going as I could do without aggravating my tinnitus. My wife managed to get the sound turned down at Barbie recently- something of a triumph.

Sorry to hear your tinnitus affliction. Mrs. M deployed earplugs throughout Oppenheimer, & only afterwards said " Oh, I could have given you some" when I complained about the noise levels. Nevertheless, it is an important and brilliantly conceived, scripted, acted and directed work which everyone should see.

[Master Jacques]

It doesn’t surprise me she got good reviews . Saw a Boheme pre lockdown (might have been a rehearsal at Covent Garden to be fair ) where she lit up a lacklustre performance from the moment she came on stage as Musetta. She has definitely got something .

Indeed she has. And I'm only sorry that she gave Blanche de la Force the thumbs down.

[Roslynmuse]

This was my first Prom since 2018 and I'm very glad I went. I agree with other posters who have said that the real star was the LPO and Robin Ticciati. Pacing was completely natural, the sound worlds created ranged from the shatteringly incisive to an expressive warmth that stopped just on the right side of the over-done. The staging was brilliant and I can only imagine how much more powerful and claustrophobic it would feel at Glyndebourne. Does anyone know whether it was filmed there?

I was less bothered by Sally Matthews' sound and acting than some here. Yes, the sound is a bit spread, but it wasn't excessively so. To my ears, the weakest performance came from Golda Schultz as Madame Lidoine. Her French sounded too syllabic to me, without any sense of line or flow. And I was not convinced by her acting in the least. Katarina Dalayman was superb as Madame de Croissy and her death scene was just as disturbing as it should be. The staging here was unforgettable. Karen Cargill was also outstanding as Mère Marie - a performance full of humanity and warmth, but authority too. Florie Valiquette as Soeur Constance was appropriately fresh-voiced and her performance made her a less irritating character than she sometimes seems. Child-like rather than childish? (Why did the iron in her first scene have an anachronistic electric flex, though?) Vincent Ordonneau as the Priest was the best of the men, although the thugs - Commissaries - were well done. The mob was terrifying, and the ensemble nuns each had their own personalities and in the final scenes reacted -again quite disturbingly - to the reality of their death sentence. I don't think I shall forget the panic attack suffered by one of them. One thing that the programme did not make clear was the passage of time - 1789 in Act 1 to 1792 at the end - the only clue really coming from the official's reading of the sentence of death which includes the date.

The reference made above to Pierre-Octave Ferroud's death as echoed in the final scene of the opera was one I mentioned on these boards some years ago.

I was gratified that the audience did NOT applaud inappropriately. However, I was surprised by the amount of coming and going during the performance, and by the number of people bringing drinks into the auditorium. I didn't actually hear anyone munching popcorn, but was surprised to see it on sale outside. Since when has this been a thing?

[mopsus]

I was gratified that the audience did NOT applaud inappropriately. However, I was surprised by the amount of coming and going during the performance, and by the number of people bringing drinks into the auditorium. I didn't actually hear anyone munching popcorn, but was surprised to see it on sale outside. Since when has this been a thing?

I was present at this Prom and feel that I chose well with the ending having its usual devastating effect. It was a spontaneous decision on the day to go and obviously choice of seats was getting limited. I decided to go for one in a box as it might minimise disturbance from my neighbours. (I recall listening to Rachmaninov to the accompaniment of someone eating a Ritter Sport bar and someone else scraping the last bit of ice cream from the carton - this was a decade ago which suggests the problem is not that recent.) And from that point of view it worked.

However my box was adjacent to a gangway and there was a pane of glass between me and the orchestra, and no way of moving my chair to avoid this. And yet this seat cost that same as all the others in the box, which did not have that impediment. In a theatre it would most likely have cost less - in fact many theatres now allow you to see (virtually) what the view from your seat will be. The orchestra of course was further back than usual to accommodate the singers.

[Master Jacques]

(Why did the iron in her first scene have an anachronistic electric flex, though?)

The props and costumes were in fact pretty much entirely modern-day, once we were past the 18th c Ancien Régime of the first scene. The modern iron with flex and plug went along with the anoraks and jeans of most of the revolutionary characters, and of course that chillingly effective orange bin bag into which the nuns threw their personal belongings before the execution. All that was exactly as in the Glyndebourne production, which also featured a mechanical digger. It was a pretty seamless way of linking Old France with Here and Now, which worked to good effect for many watchers.

[alywin]

I see I'm not the only one royally peed off with the idiocy of the RAH finding a way to outdo their previous lamentable decision to turn their venue into a giant boozer - by selling popcorn for consumption in the auditorium: https://twitter.com/jessicaduchen/st...65606646583296 (A thread started by music writer Jessica Duchen on the subject, which has, by classical music standards, blown up and subsequently been picked up by Stormin' Normin' Lebrecht)

They need calling out on this, and not in the milquetoast terms that prevail among the generally over-polite core classical constituency. The people or persons responsible for this are either incredibly stupid or wilfully ignorant or both and there is no justification for tiptoeing around the issue. Politeness is inappropriate in the face of such insult.

The next time the RAH asks me for a donation or a "Restoration Levy" they can do one (to put it in far more genteel terms than I really mean).

Have we got a thread on this? I'm appalled.