Welsh National Opera
The Carmelites

It’s hard to escape the humorous potential of nuns. From The Sound of Music to Sister Wendy, via the guitar-wielding nun in Airplane and Nuns on the Run, once the portly figure in black and white wobbles into view, the odds are good that a cheap laugh is on the way. However the visit next week of the Welsh National Opera with its phenomenal production of Poulenc’s harrowing Dialogues of The Carmelites should do something to redress the balance.
One of the most unpleasant events of the French Revolution involved the execution in 1794 of a whole convent of Carmelite nuns who had taken a vow of martyrdom rather than see their comvent dissolved. Poulenc used this tale - at a time when his boyfriend was dying and he thought he himself was mortally ill - as a starting point for a meditation on passion, suffering and death set in his characteristic melodically abundant and abstract idiom. Phyllida Lloyd’s elegant production, all sliding walls and precise lighting, homes in on the human scale of the story, and the final scene, where the nuns walk to the guillotine one by one singing the Salve Regina, is a stunning coup de theatre. In the cast Catrin Wyn-Davies as the young novice Blanche and company stalwart Suzanne Murphy stand out, while Elizabeth Vaughan gives a memorable cameo as the Old Prioress, abandoning God on her deathbed. Not a performance to miss.
Also coming to the Apollo with the Carmelites are Katie Mitchell’s drab production of Don Giovanni, Mozart’s account of the great lover’s downfall, with Robert Hayward as the Don and Nuccia Focile singing Donna Elvira, his former conquest hell-bent on revenge, and Verdi’s tears-of-a-clown tragedy Rigoletto in Patrick Mason’s neo-renaissance production. With cheap standby tickets now available, there should be no excuse not to see something a little out of the ordinary this week.
Tom Hardwick