In the mid-1950s, the composer Francis Poulenc was commissioned to write a new opera. His choice of story – the martyrdom of a group of Carmelite nuns during the revolutionary Terror in France – was in many ways a surprising one. He was seen as something of a musical clown, lacking in seriousness (his latest opera had been a surrealist farce full of cross-dressing), and his tentative Catholicism was largely at odds with his unabashed homosexuality.
Even more surprising was the new opera’s success. Most operas with religious themes fall into one of two camps, neither of which has had much staying power. There are the comic, sensational opera buffa which reached their peak in the 18th century, in which religion is primarily a source of sex and scandal, full of nubile young nuns and lascivious abbots. At the other extreme there are sincere treatments of religious stories like Messiaen’s St Francis of Assisi which, for all its pious seriousness, features little by way of dramatic appeal for those in the stalls.
