Question: Dialogues of the Carmelites was an opera that had a libretto by which French composer and pianist?
Context: Anna Cymmerman is a Polish operatic soprano.  She studied at the Academy of Music in Łódź where she majored in Vocal Acting and Performance and graduated with honors in June, 2000.  While a student, she debuted as a soloist in the Grand Theatre, Łódź.  There, she performed in Polish as Blanche in Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites" directed by Christopher Kelm.  Her performance was appreciated both by critics and viewers.  She won a competition whose judges included Ewa Podleś and Andrzej Drabowicz.  She has since performed in opera productions in Austria, Denmark, Holland, and Germany.  Her performance in Karol Szymanowski's "Stabat Mater" at Chicago's International Music Theater was considered a great success. Dialogues des Carmélites ("Dialogues of the Carmelites") is a French opera in three acts, divided into twelve scenes with linking orchestral interludes, with music and libretto by Francis Poulenc, completed in 1956.  The composer's second opera, Poulenc wrote the libretto after the work of the same name by Georges Bernanos.  The opera tells a fictionalised version of the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns who, in 1794 during the closing days of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce their vocation. Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (] ; 7 January 189930 January 1963) was a French composer and pianist.  His compositions include "mélodies", solo piano works, chamber music, choral pieces, operas, ballets, and orchestral concert music.  Among the best-known are the piano suite "Trois mouvements perpétuels" (1919), the ballet "Les biches" (1923), the "Concert champêtre" (1928) for harpsichord and orchestra, the Organ Concerto (1938), the opera "Dialogues des Carmélites" (1957), and the "Gloria" (1959) for soprano, choir and orchestra. Eilene Hannan AM (24 July 194611 July 2014) was an Australian operatic soprano with an international reputation.  She was particularly associated with opera sung in English, although she also sang in other languages.  She was as well known as an actress as she was a singer.  Her repertoire included Mozart's Pamina, Susanna, Cherubino, Dorabella and Zerlina; Mimì in Puccini's "La bohème"; Natasha Rostova in Prokofiev's "War and Peace"; Tatiana in Tchaikovsky's "Eugene Onegin"; Marzelline in Beethoven's "Fidelio"; Mélisande in Debussy's "Pelléas et Mélisande"; Blanche in Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites"; the title roles in Janáček's "Káťa Kabanová", "Jenůfa" and "The Cunning Little Vixen"; the Marschallin in Richard Strauss's "Der Rosenkavalier"; Princess Eboli in Verdi's "Don Carlos"; Pat Nixon in Adams' "Nixon in China"; Wagner's Sieglinde and Venus; Salome in Massenet's "Hérodiade"; and Monteverdi's Poppea. Catherine Dubosc (born 12 March 1959) is a French soprano.  Born in Lille, she studied with Eric Tappy at the Opéra National de Lyon, before joining that company in 1985.  She is well known for her Mozart roles, but she has also sung operas written significantly earlier ("Giasone") and later ("Dialogues of the Carmelites"). Virginia Zeani (born Virginia Zehan; 21 October 1925), Commendatore OMRI is a Romanian-born opera singer who sang leading soprano roles in the opera houses of Europe and North America.  As a singer, she was known for her dramatic intensity and the beauty, wide range, and suppleness of her voice which allowed her to sing a repertoire of 69 roles ranging from the heroines in belcanto operas by Rossini and Donizetti to those of Wagner, Puccini and Verdi.  She also created roles in several 20th-century operas, including Blanche in Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites".  Zeani made her professional debut in 1948 as Violetta in "La traviata" which would become one of her signature roles.  After her retirement from the stage in 1982, she became a well-known voice teacher.  She was married to the Italian bass Nicola Rossi-Lemeni from 1957 until his death in 1991.  A Distinguished Professor Emerita at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music where she taught for many years, Zeani lives in Palm Beach County, Florida and has continued to teach singing privately. Samson was an opera by the French composer Jean-Philippe Rameau with a libretto by Voltaire.  The work was never staged due to censorship, although Voltaire later printed his text.  Rameau intended the opera on the theme of Samson and Delilah as the successor to his debut "Hippolyte et Aricie", which premiered in October 1733.  Like "Hippolyte", "Samson" was a "tragédie en musique" in five acts and a prologue.  Voltaire had become a great admirer of Rameau's music after seeing "Hippolyte" and suggested a collaboration with the composer in November 1733.  The opera was complete by late summer 1734 and went into rehearsal.  However, a work on a religious subject with a libretto by such a notorious critic of the Church was bound to run into controversy and "Samson" was banned.  An attempt to revive the project in a new version in 1736 also failed.  The score is lost, although Rameau recycled some of the music from "Samson" in his later operas. Kevin Short is an American operatic bass-baritone.  A graduate of Morgan State University, the Curtis Institute of Music, and the Juilliard School, he won the bass-baritone award for the Middle Atlantic region Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions in 1989.  From 1991-1998 he appeared annually at the Metropolitan Opera, singing in a total of 129 performances.  He notably created the role of Joseph in the world premiere of John Corigliano's "The Ghosts of Versailles" in 1991.  Some of the other roles he has performed at the Met are Colline in "La Bohème", the Friar in "Don Carlos", Happy in "La fanciulla del West", the Jailer in "Dialogues of the Carmelites", Lackey in "Ariadne auf Naxos", Mandarin in "Turandot", Masetto in "Don Giovanni", Sciarrone in "Tosca", Pirro in "I Lombardi alla prima crociata", Yamadori in "Madama Butterfly", and Zaretsky in "Eugene Onegin".  He also sang several roles with the New York City Opera during the 1980s and 1990s, including Nourabad in "The Pearl Fishers" and Raimondo in "Lucia di Lammermoor". Denise Duval (Paris, 23 October 1921Bex, 25 January 2016) was a French soprano, best known for her performances in the works of Francis Poulenc on stage and in recital.  During an international career, Duval created the roles of Thérèse in "Les mamelles de Tirésias", Elle in "La voix humaine", and excelled in the role of Blanche de la Force in "Dialogues of the Carmelites", leaving recordings of these and several other of her main roles. Nell Gwynne is a three-act comic opera composed by Robert Planquette, with a libretto by H. B. Farnie.  The libretto is based on the play "Rochester" by William Thomas Moncrieff.  The piece was a rare instance of an opera by a French composer being produced first in London.  Farnie had written an earlier libretto on the same subject, with the same name, for composer Alfred Cellier, which was produced at the Prince's Theatre in Manchester in 1876.
Answer: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc