Solo: Ashley Holland baritone - Marquis de la Force
Solo:Catrin Wyn-Davies soprano - Blanche de la Force
Solo: Gary Coward baritone - Thierry
Solo: Natalie Herman soprano - Off-stage voice
Solo: Dame Josephine Barstow soprano - Mother Marie
Solo: Orla Boylan soprano - Madame Lidoine
Solo: Jane Powell mezzo-soprano - Mother Jeanne
Solo: Anne Marie Gibbons mezzo-soprano - Sister Mathilde
Solo: Ryland Davies tenor - The Chaplain
Solo: William Berger baritone - Monsieur Javelinot
Solo: James Edwards tenor - First Commissioner
Solo: Roland Wood baritone - Second Commissioner
Solo: Toby Stafford-Allen baritone - First Officer
Solo: David Stephenson baritone - Gaoler
Choral: English National Opera Chorus
Orchestra: English National Opera Orchestra
Conductor:Paul Daniel
20-26 October 2005
About
Poulenc: The Dialogues of the Carmelites Following the successful production at ENO, Paul Daniel has taken the cast into the studio for this thrilling recording. Catrin Wyn-Davies, Dame Josephine Barstow and Felicity Palmer star in this devastating tale ending in Nuns being sentenced to death by Guillotine during the French Revolution.
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Reviews
"... It’s one of the most surprising and rewarding of Chandos’s Opera in English series."
Hugh Canning – The Sunday Times (Culture magazine) – 10 May 2020
Josephine Barstow as the assistant prioress brought both a vocal and dramatic command to her role, as did Catrin Wyn-Davies to the central character, Blanche de la Force.
Online Review London
Catrin Wyn-Davies acted Blanche most affectingly, unfailingly catching the contrasting facets of the character.
Opera Magazine
Catrin Wyn-Davies acted Blanche most affectingly, unfailingly catching the contrasting facets of the character.
Opera Magazine
It is a marvellous ensemble performance, gut-wrenching at the end as the ‘chorus’ dwindles into a solo as each member perishes on the scaffold.
Sunday Times
Daniel captures the cumulative momentum of this series of dialogues within a community in the shadow of revolution. Felicity Palmer’s Old Prioress and Josephine Barstow’s characterful Mother Marie are here particularly strongly cast, with Orla Boylan as an eloquent Madame Lidoine. The young voices of Catrin Wyn-Davies and Sarah Tynan are nicely complementary as Blanche and Constance – and the recording makes good use of space and depth of field.
BBC Music Magazine
Paul Daniel paces it magnificently, building up inexorably to that heart-stopping final scene and moving the music along so that we, too, feel ourselves swept up in events over which we have no control, even when the ultimate tragedy is so inevitable. Daniel’s intense reading, the moments of silence every bit as telling as the most full-bloodied sounds, draws stunning orchestral playing from the English National opera musicians.
International Record Review
Paul Daniel conducts a strong lyrical performance, finding the secret of Poulenc’s delicate and always apposite orchestration. As Blanche, the novice whose nerve fails her, Catrin Wyn-Davies sings movingly throughout; her scene with Sarah Tynan’s adorable sister Constance is a touching highlight. Felicity Palmer’s powerful Old Prioress sends a chill down the spine, and Josephine Barstow gives a riveting portrayal of Mother Marie. The studio recording is clear and well up to this label’s high standards.
Sunday Telegraph
Josephine Barstow as the assistant prioress brought both a vocal and dramatic command to her role, as did Catrin Wyn-Davies to the central character, Blanche de la Force.
Online Review London
Just as the guillotined nuns derived collective strength from their shared suffering, so the individual qualities of a fine cast combine to create a truly powerful performance of Poulenc’s post-war psychological masterpiece. The characters, singing in English, range from felicity palmer’s ageing contralto Prioress howling at the horrors of a slow bed-ridden death to Sarah Tynan’s high soprano novice gleefully embracing the quick oblivion of the blade. Catrin Wyn-Davies’s Blanche tries occasionally but we feel her torment. Daniel conducts an incisive band, while the chorus sings a haunting Ave Verum.
The Times
Poulenc stated that his Dialogues should be performed in the language of the country, something rarely practiced today…Intelligibility is extraordinary…
Fanfare
There is a frission between the often statuesque music from the orchestra and the urgency – and musicality – with which Catrin Wyn-Davies’s Blanche and Josephine Barstow’s Mother Marie, in particular, articulate their lines as they face their tragic fate. The Old Prioress’s ‘bad death’ is vividly enacted by Felicity Palmer while, at the other end of the scale Sister Constance’s youthful innocence is tellingly portrayed by Sarah Tynan. The English text comes through with particular clarity, even across an orchestra that seems truly energised by Daniel’s conducting.
The Telegraph
Not that the ENO Orchestra needs flattering: the playing is exceptionally responsive to everything demanded of it by Poulenc, and the warm sound devised by Chandos’ Brian and Ralph Couzens emphasizes the similar warmth felt by the composer for his characters. He loved them for their strengths and for their frailties, and Paul Daniel, in what was surely on of his best undertakings at ENO, loves and understands them too. The moments of violence and pain are there, but this reading as a whole is one of lyricism, tenderness and compassion.
Opera
This studio recording based on a recent ENO production is worth buying for several of the performances alone: Felicity palmer is terrifyingly good as a Prioress dying in fear and agony, and Josephine Barstow and Orla Boylan are superb too. Paul Daniel’s conducting is also beautifully judged.
Classic FM Magazine
It’s conducted with implacable menace by Paul Daniel, and superbly played.. Catrin Wyn-Davies is an impressive Blanche, tellingly exposing the neuroses that lie behind the girl’s spirituality, while Josephine Barstow is truly terrifying as the near fundamentalist Mother Marie.
The Guardian
ENO’s recent production of Poulenc’s great tragedy (sung in English) was unforgettable in the theatre and makes compelling listening on disc: a showpiece of marvellous singing, with Cathryn Wyn-Davies’s Blanche, Josephine Barstow’s Mother Marie and Felicity Palmer’s Old Prioress leading a brilliant ensemble cast. Paul Daniels encourages rich-hued playing from the ENO orchestra.
The Telegraph ‘Discs of the Year’
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