Have faith: Heavenly production is a miracle

James Jorden

OPERA REVIEW

DIALOGUES DES CARMÉLITES
Metropolitan Opera, Lincoln Center; 212-362-6000. Next performance Thursday, also Saturday May 11. Running time: 190 minutes, one intermission.

The most sensuous sounds at the Met this week come from an opera with nary a love duet.

In "Dialogues des Carmélites" — Francis Poulenc's 1957 melodrama about an order of nuns martyred during the French Revolution — the music's voluptuous sweetness depicts the sisters' intense religious faith.

The piece also boasts one of opera's most spine-tingling finales, when the Carmelites march to the scaffold, their soaring hymn punctuated by the grisly swoosh of the guillotine.

This revival also offers a chance to savor John Dexter's exquisitely spare 1977 production, set on a stage-spanning cross-shaped platform hovering in a mysterious black void.

So powerful are the work and the staging that Saturday's merely solid performances felt satisfying. Strongest of the singers was Elizabeth Bishop as the fanatical nun Mother Marie, her muscular mezzo confidently leaping to the part's many high B-flats.

More workmanlike were Felicity Palmer, expertly deploying a husk of a mezzo in the agonizing death scene of the order's prioress, and Patricia Racette as her successor, chirping blandly in Madame Lidoine's Puccini-like arias.

In the central role of Blanche, Isabel Leonard flaunted a velvety mezzo with high C's most sopranos would envy. However, her coolly poised stage presence made nonsense of the character, a troubled girl who flees to the convent to avoid the stress of daily life.

The real star of the afternoon, though, was the indomitable Met orchestra under Louis Langrée's precise baton. During a part of the season dominated by Wagner's bombastic "Ring" cycle, they mustered the nuance necessary to make this silken score glow.

That feat felt almost as miraculous as the tale of faith recounted in Poulenc's delectable opera.

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