A Telling Moment Poulenc's 'Dialogues des Carmélites' - appreciated by ROBERT ANDERSON '... finely expressed ...'

It was on Mount Carmel that Elijah worsted the priests of Baal. I suspect they were a far more decent lot than the Parisian mob that loaded the tumbrils on their way to 'La veuve', that tireless guillotine so omnivorous in its tastes that it demanded heads attached to any political persuasion, those of any religious devotee, and ultimately a spinkling of mobsters for good value. So Carmelite nuns had to go the way of much French flesh at the merciless end of the Eighteenth Century. It is a telling moment at the start of this joint Amsterdam-Milan production that Parisians mass on stage during the prelude, symbolically baying already for blood.

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