Unraveling Voices of Fear: Hysteria in Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites Colette Patricia Simonot Schulich School of Music McGill University Montreal, Quebec, Canada November 2010 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfilment of the requirements of the degree of PhD in Musicology Colette Patricia Simonot 2010 All rights reserved ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I first read about Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites while completing research on Poulenc’s Gloria for a set of program notes. As fate would have it, I attended a production of the opera a few short months later at the Faculté de musique at the Université de Montréal. The rest, as they say, is history. I would like to extend heartfelt thanks first to my parents, Joseph and Gloria Simonot, without whose unflagging support I would not have been able to undertake graduate studies. My supervisor Steven Huebner and my second reader Lloyd Whitesell provided guidance and inspiration throughout this challenging process. Several fellow graduate students contributed directly to this project by editing text and citations, formatting musical examples, translating, discussing ideas, and providing moral support. I especially want to thank Jon Godin, Heather White Luckow, Erin Helyard, Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, Remi Chiu, Adalyat Issiyeva, and Michael Ethen. I am grateful for many McGill music graduate students not named here, past and present, who provided me with friendship and encouragement. Thank you also to my friends Cathleen Gingrich, Michael Ryneveld, and Manuel Cardoso, who have all helped me to maintain a healthy perspective. My research was made possible by financial support from the J.W. McConnell Foundation and the Schulich Scholarship Fund, assistance from Cynthia Leive and the staff of the Marvin Duchow Music Library, and guidance from graduate program director Eleanor Stubley and her assistant Hélène Drouin. Finally, I would like to thank Dr. James V. Maiello who, with his love, support, and occasional prodding, saw me through to the end of this dissertation. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................................................................... ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................................................. iii LIST OF FIGURES ....................................................................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................................. vi ABRÉGÉ ..................................................................................................................................................................... vii INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................................................... 1 Dialogues des Carmélites: The Opera Plot .......................................................................................................... 4 The Nuns’ Story: A Historical Viewpoint ............................................................................................................ 5 Review of Literature ............................................................................................................................................ 9 Chapter Outline .................................................................................................................................................. 11 Significance........................................................................................................................................................ 14 CHAPTER ONE: BERNANOS AND POULENC: POLITICS AND FAITH ........................................................... 17 1.1 Georges Bernanos (1888-1948) ........................................................................................................................ 18 Political Stance: L’Action française .............................................................................................................. 20 Literary Output .............................................................................................................................................. 26 Bernanos’s Dialogues des Carmélites ........................................................................................................... 32 1.2 Francis Poulenc (1899-1963) ............................................................................................................................. 43 Faith .............................................................................................................................................................. 53 Politics........................................................................................................................................................... 61 The Genesis of Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites .................................................................................... 66 CHAPTER TWO: THE PRIORESS’S MAD SCENE ................................................................................................ 69 2.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................................................... 69 2.2 Defining Operatic Madness in the Musicological Literature ............................................................................ 71 2.3 The Prioress’s Mad Scene ................................................................................................................................ 80 Act I, Scene iv: Dramatic Summary.............................................................................................................. 80 Overview of Poulenc’s Mad Scene ............................................................................................................... 83 2.4 Hysteria Revisited ........................................................................................................................................... 106 Medical Illness or Artistic Metaphor?: Critiquing the Feminist Reading of Hysteria ................................. 106 Paradigms of Illness .................................................................................................................................... 111 Charcot’s Theatre of Hysteria ..................................................................................................................... 116 2.5 Hysteria and Poulenc’s Prioress ..................................................................................................................... 119 CHAPTER THREE: BLANCHE AS HYSTERIC OR MYSTIC? ........................................................................... 133 3.1 Introduction .................................................................................................................................................... 133 3.2 Hysteric or Mystic: The Mysteric Conundrum ............................................................................................... 134 3.3 Mysticism in Dialogues des Carmélites as a Response to Hysteria in La Religieuse ..................................... 141 Hysteria in Diderot’s La Religieuse ............................................................................................................ 142 Comparing La Religieuse with Dialogues des Carmélites .......................................................................... 146 Mysticism in Dialogues des Carmélites ...................................................................................................... 149 3.4 Thérèse of Lisieux: Literary Model for Bernanos .......................................................................................... 156 Thérèse’s Early Life and Blanche ............................................................................................................... 159 Thérèse’s Conversion .................................................................................................................................. 164 Spirituality of Childhood............................................................................................................................. 166 Post-Conversion Thérèse and Constance .................................................................................................... 168 3.5 Poulenc’s Motives: The Musical Language of Mystical Conversion ............................................................. 172 Musical Motives Associated with Blanche ................................................................................................. 174 Musical Motives Associated with Constance .............................................................................................. 176 A Musical Reading of Conversion .............................................................................................................. 179 The Fear Motive .......................................................................................................................................... 180 The Transcendence Motive ......................................................................................................................... 189 iii CHAPTER FOUR: THE PSYCHOLOGICAL PROGRAM AND