This April 24, 2013 photo provided by the Metropolitan Opera shows the opening scene in Poulenc's "Dialogues des Carmélites," during a dress rehearsal at the Metropolitan Opera in New York. (AP ...

The opera tells the harrowing true story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, a convent of nuns executed during the French Revolution. More than two centuries later, their sacrifice continues to resonate, and ...

Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites is a true one-off, an uneasy, sometimes queasy mixture of the sensual and the spiritual. Before the lights go down, it's easy to be flippant about an opera that ends ...

For its latest musical adventure, Long Beach Opera requisitioned the basement of an old bank building downtown, vault and all. Now known as the Underground Club (part of the Federal Bar), the space ...

No one who has ever heard Francis Poulenc's opera "Dialogues of the Carmelites" is likely to forget the sound of the guillotine slicing through the orchestra 14 times in the final scene. Those ...

"Some people thought it was a bit inappropriate to write something light after the war," Opera Parallele music director Nicole Paiement notes. The subject? Gay French composer Francis Poulenc's first ...

Paul Corona performs as Javelinot, Karita Mattila as Mme. de Croissy and Karin Cargill as Mere Marie in Dialogues des Carmelites. Some operas inspire reverence beyond who gets kissed and who gets ...