Posted on 07/17/2008 1:03:25 PM PDT by nanetteclaret
The French Revolution reveals the titanic struggle between good and evil. During the terror, over 40,000 Frenchmen were executed just for holding fast to the Catholic Faith and objecting to the worst excesses of the Committee of Public Safety. The blood lost in the years of 1792-1794 staggers the imagination even in the retelling and the campaign against the Church was as diabolical as it was cruel.
Contemplative religious communities had been among the first targets of the fury of the French Revolution against the Catholic Church. Less than a year from May 1789 when the Revolution began with the meeting of the Estates-General, these communities had been required by law to disband. But many of them continued in being, in hiding. Among these were the community of the Carmelite nuns of Compiegne, in northeastern France not far from Paris - the fifty-third convent in France of the Carmelite sisters who followed the reform of St. Teresa of Avila, founded in 1641, noted throughout its history for fidelity and fervor. Their convent was raided in August 1790, all the property of the sisters was seized by the government, and they were forced to discard their habits and leave their house. They divided into four groups which found lodging in four different houses all near the same church in Compiegne, and for several years they were to a large extent able to continue their religious life in secret. But the intensified surveillance and searches of the “Great Terror” revealed their secret, and in June 1794 most of them were arrested and imprisoned.
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicapologetics.info ...
I think this story deserves a special thread today.
sandyeggo, would you post that beautiful picture again?
Carmelite Martyrs of Compiegne bump.
Oh, so these nuns deserved to die for being part of the “oppressive” class? I’m glad you agree with the proto-communist Jacobins.
I forgot to add “Catholic Caucus” to this thread but have asked the Religion Moderator to do it for me.
Thanks.
This is a Catholic Caucus. If you are not Catholic, leave the thread.
Not excusing anything- just want to spread the sypmathies a little broader. Some proportionality would be nice.
Are you Catholic?
At the end of the opera, the nuns go one by one up the scaffold and are dispatched in time to the music.
My wife and I were supernumeraries in a production of it here at Houston Grand Opera back in 1988. There was a guillotine just off stage, and the audience could see its sillouhette and the flash of the blade, and the music is timed so that the dropping of the blade hits at certain moments. the nuns sing Salve regina in unison, and the sounds of their voices get smaller as their numbers diminish until there is only one left (the lead character-Blanche). Blanche begins to sing Deo patri sit gloria, and her voice is cut short by the dropping of the blade. It gives me cold chills when I relive the moment. I was on stage as a Revolutionary (non-singing) Commissionaire and my wife was in the middle of the Mob. It was almost like I was really there during a moment of mass hysteria.
I wish there was a video of the production, as it was really clever and moving. However, if you only listened to it on CD, the ending is quite gripping.
I’m sorry ..
I did not know you intended this to be a caucus ...
If you wish to, feel free to have my last post deleted..
I’m printing a copy to take to St. Benedict Abbey later this afternoon. The brothers will be very interested to read it. Thanks so much. It’s heartbreaking.
The current problem in France cannot be blamed in any way on the purgation of the Hugenots. It is entirely the legacy of the French Revolution.
I notice protestant Great Britian has a Muslm problem. If only the Catholics could have lived in peace...............
I was just pointing out the difference...
And the very real current danger to the French...
Especially the Christians...
Catholic or Protestant..
ping
Thank you for your discussion of the opera, it sounds like something to see. I think I’ll look for a DVD of it, or a CD of the music.
I posted the finale at comment 9. The Lyric’s version was even better.
Thank you very much.
English Catholics have a direct link to the Martyrs, in that the Benedictine nuns who were imprisoned with them were eventually able to return to England. Once there, the Benedictine nuns preserved the Martyrs clothes as relics (the Martyrs’ bodies had been thrown into a common grave and all that was left of their possessions were their tattered secular clothes, which the Benedictines had worn upon their release) and they were instrumental in helping to get the Martyrs beatified. The Benedictines believed fervently that the Martyrs’ deaths had saved them and led to their ultimate release. The relics are kept at the Benedictine Abbey of Stanbrook, Worcestershire.
“Dialogues of the Carmelites” is available on DVD. It’s a Strasbourg Opera production on the ArtHaus Musik label. It’s quite good.
Powerful music — takes one’s breath away. Thank you both for posting.
A wonderful thread nanette. I don’t remember ever hearing about it. The singing was heart rending - truly magnificent. Thanks for the ping and everyones contributions - well almost everyone. mikeus_maximus - be careful what you wish for - you mightn’t like the end result!
Publius, yes there are several productions on DVD which I will have to check out. I was lamenting that our specific production in Houston was not available. In the HGO production, the director was rather arty. He had a sort of bleachers onstage which was filled with revolutionary mob types on one side and aristocrats on the other. As the opera progressed, during scene changes, some soldiers would come and arrest the aristocrats, who would go to the dressing room and don mob attire and then go back to the bleachers. By the end of the opera, the bleachers were entirely filled with mob types with heads on pikes, etc. One even had a head on a pike that represented the head of Blanche's father.
Our Mother Superior, Mme. Lidoine, was played by Alessandra Marc, who had an amazingly smooth, yet big voice. People backstage and offstage would stop talking to listen to her, particularly in the scene just before the nuns are herded off to the place d'execution. The young singer who played Blanche's friend Constance had a voice like Kathleen Battle.
I have the L'opera National du Rhin version on order. I may revisit that Australian one when I can watch those clips and maybe even the Boulogne version. Polenc's music is rather modern, but there is much beauty in this piece.
When my wife and I were picked to be supers in Dialogues of the Carmelites, we were disappointed. HGO was also doing Verdi's Otello with Placido Domingo, then at his height, and we hoped we'd be chosen for that. Dialogues is not done often, and I was unfamiliar with it, and assumed it was modern dissonant drivel. As I listened more and more during rehearsals, it really grew on me. I still remember the first run-through of the finale. I was at the rehearsal because I and my fellow commisioner had to help herd the nuns on at the end, but my wife was not called for that one. I had not heard the finale at that point. I got home and told the wife "you are not going to believe how this thing ends." After all was said and done, we were glad we were chosen to be in Dialogues, else we would never have discovered it.
I got home and told the wife "you are not going to believe how this thing ends."
The first time I saw the end, I was stunned. The way Poulenc handles the executions was brilliant. The chorus shrinks one by one until the soprano finishes with her voice on the high end of the staff, and then she falls. A two-bar rest, the reeds finish in G minor, and then a pizzicato last note on the strings. I couldn't budge after that.
Thanks Sandy.
These modern productions really take a lot of the effect away when they go for symbolic depictions of dramatic events. I'm getting to where I am more interested in older productions of operas than new.
Bump for the night crew.
One more bump, for the later-night crew.
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