Dialogues des Carmélites at Glyndebourne Festival 2023

My interest in seeing Dialogues des Carmélites at Glyndebourne was almost entirely due to having seen in a few years ago when on holiday in Košice, Slovakia when it made little sense to me as it was sung in French with Slovak sur-titles. 

As the image for the production shows, it is not a happy story either so I was a little surprised when some friends suggested that they would like to go too.

Dates were arranged and we got our seats in Red Upper Circle Row C for £146. Glyndebourne does do cheaper seats, and much more expensive ones, but I think that the Upper Circle offers best value.

Our friends offered to drive us down which was the only time that we planned to travel by car this year, for the other five visits the train was taking the strain. The journey went ok, and we arrived almost spot on 3pm (by which time the gardens were just opening and the car park was already half full), but it was more stressful and cramped than the train would have been.

The pre-opera session went much as usual with some cake, hot drinks from a hut in the hamlet, the first bottle of bubbly and a walk around the gardens. The flower beds all looked glorious and it was a very pleasant walk even having done it so many times before.

The opera itself got off to a good start with a very simple set, two marble effect walls converging at the back of the stage. 

This staging was used throughout with some furniture coming and going as the scenes changed, and there were a lot of scenes. It was very effective and again proved my point that simple staging works best.

The other feature of the production that struck me early on was the way that the characters often learnt against or stood next to the side walls when there was no dramatic reason for doing so. I had noticed the same thing in another production a few years ago and I hope that there was a connection. I found this effective also as it draw attention to the characters in a way that standing in the middle would not have done.

I only half-knew the story from my previous experience of the opera and the blurp provided by Glyndebourne to entice me to buy tickets and filling in the gaps as the evening progressed helped to join the dots but also revealed the weaknesses in the story, despite it being based on a real incident during the French Reign of Terror. 

But this is opera and the point of the story is to provide the framework for the music and it did that admirably. Given the dramatic ending of the story (again I refer to the artwork above) it is no surprise that the music ended dramatically too and the final scene was a triumph.

If left the singing to last simply because there is nothing very much to say about that, I expect great singing at Glyndebourne and, once again, I got it.

Dialogues des Carmélites was a very worth addition to the Glyndebourne Festival and reminded me, if I needed it, why I keep going there.