What has always struck me about the Met's staging of "Dialogues of the Carmelites, " by contrast, is its straightforward, unironic seriousness of tone.

WSJ: Long After the Initial Shock, Modernism Still Delivers | Sightings by Terry Teachout

"We needed something to feed us peace, " said Ms. Racette, 47, who will be performing "Il Trovatore" and "Dialogues des Carmelites" at New York's Metropolitan Opera this season.

WSJ: A Diva's Desert Hideaway

He also wrote profound song cycles, gorgeous chamber music and a powerful opera, "Dialogues of the Carmelites" (1957), whose subject is religious martyrdom and which the Metropolitan Opera will be reviving this spring for the first time since 2003.

WSJ: Francis Poulenc | More Than Almost Great | Sightings by Terry Teachout

The fact that the Met's "Dialogues of the Carmelites" has stayed fresh and vital for nearly four decades is thus an eloquent tribute to the imagination of John Dexter but it also says much about the enduring significance of modernism itself.

WSJ: Long After the Initial Shock, Modernism Still Delivers | Sightings by Terry Teachout

One of the most harrowing final scenes in all of opera is the ending of Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites, " when the nuns condemned by the French Revolution walk one by one to the scaffold, singing a gradually thinning chorus punctuated by the slashing sounds of a guillotine.

WSJ: Review: Stirring revival of Poulenc opera at Met