The title role in Francis Poulenc’s 1944 opera Les mamelles de Tiresias is not played by anyone onstage, but by the bag of balloons on director Dan Miller’s prop table. A pair of those balloons, ...

The opera tells the harrowing true story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, a convent of nuns executed during the French Revolution. More than two centuries later, their sacrifice continues to resonate, and ...

A good idea, carried too far, is invariably a horrendous idea. Liberty, equality, and fraternity were preached by the French revolutionaries, but what resulted was a Seine of blood flowing from the ...

"Some people thought it was a bit inappropriate to write something light after the war," Opera Parallele music director Nicole Paiement notes. The subject? Gay French composer Francis Poulenc's first ...

For its latest musical adventure, Long Beach Opera requisitioned the basement of an old bank building downtown, vault and all. Now known as the Underground Club (part of the Federal Bar), the space ...

Washington National Opera’s premiere of Francis Poulenc’s “Dialogues of the Carmelites” is set during the French Revolution, when Carmelite nuns were guillotined for refusing to renounce their faith.

In 1794, a group of Carmelite nuns and lay sisters were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce their order and its monastic vows. Their story became the basis for a novel, a play, and finally ...

Paul Corona performs as Javelinot, Karita Mattila as Mme. de Croissy and Karin Cargill as Mere Marie in Dialogues des Carmelites. Some operas inspire reverence beyond who gets kissed and who gets ...

If you were looking for a pair of short operas to combine on a double bill, the "Mahagonny Songspiel" by Kurt Weill and "The Breasts of Tiresias" by Francis Poulenc would probably not rank very high ...