I was somewhat underwhelmed by my first encounter with Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites.  Watching this recording of a 2004 La Scala production by Robert Carsen really opened my eyes.  It’s the conducting that makes it I think,  Riccardo Muti seems to find much more in the score than Jan Latham-Koenig.  There are passages of great meditative beauty interspersed with quite shocking violence, all within an essentially tonal framework.  It’s very striking.  He’s helped by the sound on the DVD which is exceptionally vivid and three dimensional, even using the LPCM stereo option, though the Dolby 5.1 track is even better.

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