How's this for an ending? A crowd has gathered on the Place de la Revolution. The Carmelites walk towards the guillotine, led by Madame Lidoine and singing the Salve Regina. With each stroke of the blade, their voices are cut off one by one, finally leaving only Constance. On her way to the scaffold, she sees Blanche step up from the crowd, take up the chant, and follows her to her death.
On Monday 31 July, Dr. Jill Sullivan took us through to this dramatic point in Francis Poulenc's Dialogues of the Carmelites. Jill is a freelance mezzo soprano who graduated from the University of Manchester with a BA (Hons) in opera studies. She is also a medical doctor, having graduated from the University of Tasmania in 1981 with a MBBS. An added bonus was that the radiant Louise Keast sang an aria from the opera for us, with Jill at the piano.
