OPERA
WEDNESDAY & SATURDAY, MAY 8 & 11, 2019
7:30 PM WEDNESDAY
12:00 PM SATURDAY

Poulenc: Dialogues de Carmélites
Metropolitan Opera
30 Lincoln Center Plaza, Upper West Side, Manhattan

$140-$495
https://www.metopera.org/season/2018-19-season/dialogues-des-carmelites/

Francis Poulenc has the reputation of a petit-maître -- and while he's one of my very favorite composers, I can't disagree.  But how then do you account for this exquisite, nearly three-hour opera whose ending, hieratic as it may be, packs a real emotional wallop?  The lead, Sister Blanche, is another part the cool mezzo Isabel Leonard could have been born to play, and soprano Erin Morley should be a joy as the chatterbox Sister Constance; but what has opera buffs really excited here is the assumption by Karita Mattila, she of the volcanic stage presence, of the role of the First Prioress, whose (SPOILER ALERT) first-act death should, in Mattila's hands, be a shattering experience.  The production is one of the few remaining from the Met's lamented John Dexter era, spare and eloquent in a way the company has since lost.  New Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin should conduct as to the manor born.

MAKE A NIGHT OF IT:  Cafe Luxembourg, part of a fine old (it pains me to say that) line of French bistro dining in New York (one that leads through to Frenchette).