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Brought to life by some sensational singing from a strong cast, Kosky's staging delivers repeated emotional punches. 

John Dexter's production, now among the longest-serving in the company's repertory, remains a marvel of simple, effective storytelling.

An unforgettable evening at the Met as John Dexter's production of Poulenc's masterpiece is revived to close the season. 

The forces of Theater Aachen impress in a suitably harrowing and searing production of Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmèlites.

The most moving scene in 20th-century opera went for nothing

After showing in 13 theatres around the world, Robert Carsen’s Dialogues des carmélites returns again to Amsterdam, where it was premiered in 1997. Almost 20 years on, its finale remains a shattering theatrical experience.

A group of excellent singers and the Orchestra of St Luke's led by Will Crutchfield succeeded in presenting a moving concert performance of Poulenc's gut-wrenching opera.

A safe performance of Poulenc's extraordinary opera in Washington, lacking in pity and terror.

Robert Carsen’s production is an exercise in extreme minimalism. Dialogues des Carmélites is a great opera, and this production touches greatness without quite grasping it in both hands. 

Innovative programming from Manfred Honeck mingles readings, music, and chant in memory of Mozart.

When you think chic, black-tie country house opera, you probably don’t also think sixteen barefoot nuns being executed. Grange Park Opera’s fusion of these two contrasting ideas, however, has a lot going for it: their production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites combines its minimal but effective staging with some impressive singing.

Francis Poulenc’s 1957 opera Dialogues des Carmélites has the virtues of necessity. Director Robert Carsten’s production puts these virtues before us in simple black and white. The virtues begin with the story: Blanche, an aristocrat afraid of the French Revolution who hopes to find refuge in a nunnery, becomes a refugee of religious persecution, and chooses to die a martyr with her sisters.

Not a new production, the Metropolitan Opera’s staging of Dialogues des Carmélites, originally directed by John Dexter in 1977, was nonetheless fresh and compelling in its approach and not at all tired, despite its age.

Never a city to shy away from seasonal programming, this Easter Vienna is offering productions of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites, Gounod’s Faust, and Wagner’s Parsifal. The latter two, at the Staatsoper, are familiar, but audiences should run to see the Theater an der Wien’s enthralling revival of Poulenc’s relatively rarely-produced masterwork.

In 1790s France, a young noblewoman, Blanche de La Force, decides to enter a Carmelite convent. As the increasingly paranoid revolutionaries close in, Blanche, her family and the nuns hold a series of discussions on their circumstances, the danger, their faith and, ultimately, their martyrdom.