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Religious Choral Music, Lyrical Dramas, Opera buffa
Poulenc's music is "directly or indirectly inspired by the purely melodic associations of the human voice"
Religious choral music's main works:
For soprano, choir and orchestra: Sept Répons des ténèbres, commissioned by the New York Philharmonic (1961), Gloria (1959-60), Stabat Mater (1950)
A capella works: Four Christmas Motets (1952), Stabat Mater (1950), Four motets for Lent (1938), Messe (1937), Litanies à la Vierge Noire (1936)
GLORIA: a large scale work for soprano, mixed chorus and orchestra, premiered 21 Jan, 1961 in Boston, by the Boston Symphony with Charles Munch conducting, during Poulenc's fifth and final American concert tour.
The Gloria represents the zenith of his religious output, glowing with the spiritual radiance of Poulenc's harmony. The idea of the Gloria came to Poulenc while working on Les Dialogues des Carmélites.
Domine Deus Kathleen Battle, soprano, BSO
Agnus Dei: darker and otherworldly, hauntingly beautiful, unusually wide leaps in the soprano line.
Poulenc described his Gloria as being written with pictures in his head of "cherubs sticking out their tongues and monks playing soccer."
Lyrical Dramas:
LA VOIX HUMAINE
A forty-minute, one-act tragédie-lyrique for soprano and orchestra premiered in 1959, based on a 1930 play by Jean Cocteau.
Immediately following Les Dialogues des Carmélites, Poulenc's close work with Duval helped his compositional process because he "knew the details of her stormy love life, and this helped to cultivate a sense of specificity in the opera."
The opera tells the story of the end of a love affair. It unfolds as one half of a phone conversation. The other half takes place on the other end of the phone line, unheard by the audience. The woman, named Elle, desperately tries to win him back, passing from tenderness to passion, from the threat of attempted suicide to calm, from regret to outbursts of violence. Denise Duval was the first to perform the role, surpassing Cocteau’s vision: a woman, alone in a room, trying to navigate a failed love — and her own faltering psyche — using failing technology, as the phone cut off frequently without warning.
Cocteau to Poulenc RE La Voix humaine: "Mon cher Francis, you have sealed, once and for all, the way in which my text should be spoken."
The voice is written in recitative-style for the most part, so as to reflect actual speech patterns in a phone conversation, a striking departure from Poulenc's characteristic lyricism.
The opera is scored for full symphony orchestra, but the full orchestra rarely plays all together. Poulenc orchestrates coloristically, using small and varied instrumental combinations for different effects and lyrical motifs to bring unity to the fragmented text. Poulenc prefaces his score with: "L'oeuvre entière doit baigner dans la plus grande sensualité orchestrale." (The entire work must bathe in the greatest orchestral sensuality).
The following photos and Cocteau's drawings are from the premiere at the Théâtre National de l'Opéra-Comique, Paris, February 1959. The opera was an immediate success, performed in many countries, including the U.S.
Carnegie Hall, 1960: American premiere of La Voix humaine, with Denise Duval. Followed by a month-long tour where Duval's mastery was consistently lauded in Philadelphia, Chicago, Detroit, and Washington, and Poulenc was awarded the New York University Medal.
Cocteau's play was subsequently made into 2 movies: The Human Voice (1966) with Ingrid Bergman; and more recently, The Human Voice (2020) directed by Pedro Almodovar, with Tilda Swinton.
Les Dialogues des Carmélites (1957)
An opera in 3 acts with music and libretto by Poulenc (after a play by Georges Bernanos), divided into 12 scenes alternating with orchestral interludes. Lauded as one of the greatest operas of all times, it has become one of a handful of regularly performed operas of the 20th century.
It recounts the tragic destiny of a group of Carmelite nuns who, during the French Revolution's Reign of Terror, were sentenced to death and guillotined for refusing to renounce their faith.
This opera, in a class by itself, is a deep reflection on death, anguish and the will to live.
"On n’a pas peur, on s’imagine avoir peur. La peur est une fantasmagorie du démon." (We are not afraid, we imagine being afraid. Fear is a phantasmagoria of the devil).
Denise Duval and Régine Crespin sang the two principal roles at the Paris premiere, 21 June, 1957, Opéra National de Paris. In a June 9 letter, Poulenc expressed: "Here I am in the final preparations for my great premiere... In Paris, these are the Carmélites I dreamt of. I am thrilled by everything: sets, production, casting. Denise is sublime! What an actress! I finally see in the flesh the character I have for so long borne within me."
The world premiere had occurred at La Scala di Milano, 26 jan, 1957. German premiere in Cologne, July 1957. U.S. premiere in San Francisco, Sept 1957. British premiere at Covent Garden, Jan 1958.
By end of 1960, the opera had been acclaimed in Vienna, Cologne, Barcelona, Rome, Milan, Catania, Palermo, Buenos Aires, Geneva, Genoa, Lisbon, Ghent, Trieste, Naples, San Francisco, and at the Paris Opera 27 times.
NYC Opera in 1966, NY Met in 1977.
Poulenc dedicated the opera: "to my mother who revealed music to me, to Debussy who gave me the desire to write some, and to Monteverdi, Verdi and Mussorgsky who were my role models for this opera." He adds: "You must forgive my Carmelites. It seems they can only sing tonal music."
The music, voices and lush orchestration of this masterpiece are magnificent, poignant, stirring from beginning to end.
On a tragic personal note, Poulenc's lover at the time, Lucien Robert, 47, was very ill during the last months of work on Les Dialogues. "Lucien was delivered from his martyrdom ten days ago and the final copy of Les Carmélites was completed (take note) at the very moment my dear Lucien breathed his last."
EXCERPTS (Links on the bold titles)
Act 3 scene 3: "Mes filles, voilà que s'achève notre première nuit de prison..." After the Carmelites spent their first night in prison. Original recording with Duval and Crespin.
Same scene, with video recording
Act 2 scene 3 (with subtitles, NY Met production 2019). Blanche's brother, the Chevalier de la Force comes to persuade Blanche to withdraw from the convent. However as Blanche insists on staying, their conversation becomes bitter.
in Act 2, scene 3 "TRAILER" for the 2013 Théâtre Champs-Elysées production. Blanche: "Oh ne me quittez pas sur un adieu de fâcherie..."
The most powerful and terrifying final operatic scene ever written, four different performances of this scene:
Orchestral prelude followed by Salve Regina prayer, hauntingly beautiful, interrupted by the sound of the guillotine, as one by one each nun disappears. Frightening staging. (Manaus, Brazil production)
Final climactic scene (NY Metropolitan Opera, directed by Yannick Nézet-Seguin, 2018-19 season), with mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard in the role of Blanche de la Force.
Another beautiful rendition of the last four minutes by the Dutch National Opera.
Final scene from the same French production as below: Orchestral prelude and Salve Regina
Photos from the 2017 coproduction between La Monnaie de Munt (Brussels) and the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (Paris).
Les Mamelles de Tirésias 1947
An opéra bouffe in 2 acts, Les Mamelles is an adaptation of the surrealist play written by Guillaume Apollinaire in 1903, first performed in Paris in 1917.
Sets and design by Erté (images below), dresses by Christian Dior elegantly worn by Denise Duval in the role of Thérèse for the June 3, 1947 premiere at the Opéra-Comique.
A farcical and absurdist satire about feminism, gender fluidity, equality between the sexes, and pacifism. Thérèse turns into a man, switching sex with her husband in order to rebel against gender roles, by letting 2 large balloons - her breasts - float away from her blouse up to the ceiling. She becomes Tirésias and sets out to conquer the world. "Le Mari" is left behind at home, dressed as a woman.
Short interview followed by a performance with Poulenc at the piano and Denise Duval, soprano, in a scene from "Les Mamelles de Tirésias," Salle Gaveau, Paris, 1959.
CHAMBER MUSIC
Poulenc's strong predilection for the human voice made him gravitate towards wind instruments, for which he composed several gems. He claimed the winds were closest to the human voice.
THREE SHORT YOUTHFUL SONATAS:
Sonata for Two Clarinets, 1918, comp. at 19y-old
Sonata for Clarinet and bassoon, 1922
Sonata for horn, trumpet and trombone,1922
WORKS WITH PIANO and WINDS:
Trio for Piano, Oboe and Bassoon, 1926. Brilliant performance!
Old recording made in 1957 with Poulenc at the piano. While the sound of the oboist and bassoonist do not compare favorably with the above recording, it is of historical interest.
Sextuor for Piano, Flute, Oboe, Clarinet, Basson, and French Horn, 1939. A popular concert piece, showcasing each instrument alone and in various combinations. Boisterous, tender, lyrical, witty, very "Parisian popular entertainment." What Poulenc referred to as his "bad-boy" side!
Completes the Flute-Piano Sonata in May 1957, in the midst of the first performances of Les Dialogues. Jean-Pierre Rampal and Poulenc played the premiere on 18 June, 3 days before the Paris premiere of Les Dialogues!
Oboe-Piano Sonata, 1967, dedicated to the memory of his friend Sergei Prokofiev, premiered posthumously, 8 June, 1963, with Pierre Pierlot and Jacques Février.
The last movement "Déploration" is the very last piece Poulenc composed before his untimely death, January 30th, 1963.
Commissioned by Benny Goodman, Poulenc’s Clarinet-Piano Sonata, 1962, was premiered on April 10,1963 at Carnegie Hall with Benny Goodman on the clarinet and Leonard Bernstein at the piano. The concert turned into an unanticipated memorial at Carnegie Hall, as the 64-year-old Poulenc died suddenly of a massive heart attack only four months before. Leonard Bernstein replaced him at the piano, accompanying Benny Goodman.
On that same concert, April 10, 1963, Poulenc's Sept Répons des ténèbres, commissioned by the New York Phil was also premiered.
STRINGS
Poulenc ripped up several string quartet attempts, and claims to have thrown an early violin-piano sonata in the sewer of Paris, lost a string trio... he kept being very unsatisfied with his writing for strings, outside of orchestration.
A glorious exception:
The Violin-Piano Sonata (3 movements) 1940-43, was written in memory of his friend, Spanish poet Federico Lorca Garcia killed by Franco's army. The work is more somber; behind sensual lyrical moments hide anguish and tragedy. The middle movement is at the heart of the work and expresses the Spanish poet's quote at the top of the score: "The guitar makes dreams cry."
Above recording with Juliette Greer, violin; Cecilia Dunoyer, piano. Recorded in March 2020 during pandemic lockdown, live for an internet audience.
Benny Goodman and Leonard Bernstein rehearse Poulenc's Clarinet Sonata ahead of the work's premiere at Carnegie Hall, April 10, 1963. Bernstein, whom Poulenc deeply admired, was honored to step in for his friend.
"Poulenc, this miracle of the mysterious balance between modern and classical, between the heritage of the masters, and the robust, almost peasant inventiveness of melody wherein skill and childlike freshness fused together...."
—Jean Cocteau, upon Poulenc's death in 1963
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