Students from The Glenn Gould School’s vocal program present their fully staged annual opera in Koerner Hall, conducted by Nicholas Ellis, Principal Guest Conductor for Les Violins du Roy, and directed by Stephen Carr.
Francis Poulenc’s heartbreaking masterpiece Dialogues des Carmélites, premiered in 1957 at La Scala in Milan. Set during the French Revolution, the story revolves around a young aristocrat Blanche de la Force, who decides to retreat from the world and joins a Carmelite convent. Eventually arrested and cast out of their convent, the nuns take a vow of martyrdom rather than renounce their vocation. Blanche initially panics and runs away, but at the last moment she finds her courage and joins her sisters at the guillotine. The final scene, as the nuns go one by one to their execution while singing “Salve regina,” is one of the most poignant operatic endings.
Nicholas Ellis is the Artistic Director, Conductor, and Founder of the Orchestre de l’Agora, and currently serves as Artistic Partner to the Orchestre Métropolitain and Yannick Nézet-Séguin. He was recently named Principal Guest Conductor for Les Violons du Roy. Carr's work as a stage director, educator, and performer of opera, music theater, and operetta has taken him to the Washington National Opera, Seoul Arts Center, Daegu Opera, Palm Beach Opera, Opera North, Opera Naples, Ohio Light Opera, Eastman Opera Theater, and Center City Opera of Philadelphia.
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