Poulenc: Dialogues Des Carmelites
French composer Francis Poulenc was both an ardent Catholic and a free-loving homosexual, making the achievement of his intensely personal opera,Dialogues des Carmélites, even more remarkable. Although widely known as a mere purveyor of endlessly charming and witty music (including some of the most perfectly constructed songs of the entire 20th century), Poulenc also wrote many substantial compositions, of which the three-actCarmélitesranks highest. Based on Georges  Bernanos's story about young Blanche, a selfless nun martyred along with the  rest of her convent during the French Revolution,Carmélites,  thanks to its composer's considerable musical and dramatic skills, is one of the  most emotionally direct and unapologetically moral of all modern operas.For this 1999 production at the Opéra national du Rhin in Strasbourg, France, actress-turned-director Marthe Keller does a superlative job of conveying Poulenc's intentions. Her spare staging effectively evokes the austere world of the cloistered nuns, and there are many striking images, notably the opera's final tragic moments when the women literally drop, one by one, to the musical sound of the guillotine's blade. In a first-rate cast, Anne Sophie Schmidt is an especially touching Blanche, and conductor Jan Latham-Koenig has masterly control over the emotional ebb and flow of Poulenc's score. The DVD sound is full and rich, the subtitles are adequate, and Don Kent's video direction includes visual felicities--like slow-motion, still images, and black and white--that underscore the preordained doom without overdoing it.--Kevin Filipski