On Saturday BBC Radio 3 is broadcasting Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites live from the Met. I'm sure it's going to be great. But I'm also interested in the literary back story. Poulenc was inspired by Georges Bernanos's play, which was itself originally written as a screenplay, which was itself inspired by Gertrude von Le Fort's The Song at the Scaffold.
I'm a little busy at the moment - hence the lack of recent posts - and so haven't time to discuss the different versions properly but if you've got access to JSTOR, this article has an interesting discussion of Bernanos's version of the story in particular.
Suffice it to say, when one of the great (Catholic) composers of the 20th Century meets one of the great (Catholic) writers you have a recipe for success.
And then to compare the fictional account to the real story! William Bush's "To Quell the Terror" is an excellent account of their martyrdom and its consequences.
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