What was lacking was Blanche’s nervousness and frailty-the fear of life itself-that underlies the character. And when the terror of potential martyrdom beset Blanche, Romaniw’s voice took on an edge that captured that affectingly. In moments like that, Romaniw gave Blanche’s declarations an almost heroic resolve. Her vibrant singing easily conveyed the fervor that welled up within Blanche at pivotal points in the story-for instance, when Blanche faces down her brother, who comes to her convent trying to take her home. Natalya Romaniw brought a rich, full-throated lyric soprano to Blanche. But the revolution’s violence follows her there, and the opera focuses on Blanche’s struggle with fear-culminating in her joining her fellow nuns in the opera’s climactic procession as they walk one by one to the guillotine.
This Francesca Zambello production was first premiered at Washington National Opera in 2015.īased on a real-life historic tragedy, Dialogues adds a fictional character at the center: Blanche de la Force, a young noblewoman who is so terrified by the world’s upheavals that she retreats into a convent. The opening-night performance at Wortham Theater Center brought moving portrayals to Poulenc’s tragic drama of an order of nuns condemned to the guillotine during the French Revolution. Photo: Lynn Laneįrancis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites returned to Houston Grand Opera Friday night after an absence of 33 years. Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” opened Friday night at Houston Grand Opera.
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