Unraveling Voices of Fear: Hysteria in Francis Poulenc's 'Dialogues des Carmelites'

Francis Poulenc's 1957 opera Dialogues des Carmelites recounts the events leading up to the execution of a group of Carmelite nuns during the French Revolution. The opera traces the spiritual growth of a young novice named Blanche from pathologically fearful teenager to willing martyr. Dialogues is an adaptation of a stage play by French Catholic writer Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) who based his work on the novella Die Letzte am Schafott (1931) by German author Gertrud von Le Fort.;Ultimately, I conclude that Poulenc's sensitive setting of Bernanos's stage play suggests a political and spiritual alliance with the ardent Catholic royalist and serves as a useful gauge of the composer's stance vis a vis religion and politics in the latter part of his career.;This study focuses critically on hysteria, a theme that underpins Poulenc's opera and serves as a master metaphor in French cultural history, in which it is often indicative of social instability or degeneration. After a biographical overview to set the groundwork for subsequent investigation, I examine different facets of the hysteria theme via three major analyses. First, I focus on the Act I mad scene, interpreting the Prioress's hysteria according to the social degeneration model. My argument marks a critical reorientation that unseats the popular feminist interpretation of the operatic mad scene. Second, I examine the relationship between hysteria and mysticism, analogous phenomena over which religion and science have struggled for generations. While the Carmelites may be read simultaneously as both hysterics and mystics, I offer the following alternative: Poulenc highlights Blanche's quest for mystical transcendence via musical motives, making it preferable to view the novice not as a hysteric, but rather as a mystic. Finally, I turn to a biographical reading, in which Poulenc's identification with Blanche and the hysteria trope becomes clear in his correspondence.