"DIALOGES OF THE CARMELITES"

Eric Einhorn wants opera real

A young director makes 20th century opera about 18th century nuns ripe for the 21st century

By Jeanne Claire van Ryzin
AMERICAN-STATESMAN ARTS WRITER
Sunday, April 19, 2009

Eric Einhorn thinks of himself as a storyteller. And he's the first to admit that's almost a traditional way of thinking about his role as an opera director, not one you might expect from a 28-year-old like himself.

It's hard to know what would be typical from someone who isn't even 30 and has already started to carve a national reputation for himself in a notoriously hierarchical and competitive profession.

Einhorn arrived in Austin about a month ago to direct Austin Lyric Opera's production of Francis Poulenc's "Dialogues of the Carmelites" which opened last night at the Long Center. Einhorn has a regular gig as an assistant director for many productions at the Metropolitan Opera. And increasingly, he's invited to direct for opera companies across the country.

"What I crave (in an opera) is human interaction," he says. "And what the challenge is for me as a storyteller, is to make those human relationships as real and direct as possible."

In our day and age of multimedia, Einhorn points out, there's no fooling an audience any more with routine theatrical tricks. If you can YouTube your way through the world, what haven't you seen at this point? If media keeps you in the role as passive observer, what do you crave? Maybe, Einhorn suggests, what would feel new to an audience today is something immediate and human — a story told with clarity and sincerity.

Kevin Patterson, managing director at Austin Lyric Opera, says he invited Einhorn to direct "Dialogues" because Einhorn's background and fresh approach would give a very 21st-century perspective to Poulenc's psychologically charged opera about nuns during the French Revolution.

"I (also) asked him to direct this opera because he's not Christian. He is Jewish," Patterson says. "I wanted to not get caught up in all of the Catholic trappings of cloistered nuns. On a very basic level ('Dialogues of the Carmelites') is a story of nuns, but I wanted to challenge Eric to go beyond that initial story line as both he and I agreed that this opera has a strong universal statement. Beliefs are universal. They do not know the bounds of religion."

Written in the mid-1950s, "Dialogues" musically typifies Poulenc's lush harmonies, striking melodic lines and arresting orchestrations. And it also speaks of Poulenc's own lifelong struggle with his Roman Catholic beliefs.

Based on historical events, "Dialogues" is set during the French Revolution and subsequent Reign of Terror. The opera tells the story of a nervous young woman of nobility, Blanche de la Force, who chooses to abandon her rank, and the violence of the secular world, for the safety and sanctity of a Carmelite convent. But once at the convent, Blanche realizes the convent is hardly a place that will protect her from the revolutionary terror that is ripping through the country. The anti-religious revolutionary forces are out to seize the convent and arrest the nuns. Blanche runs away, but once she learns that the nuns are condemned to death by guillotine, she realizes she might have saved her own life but not her soul. She joins her sisters on the march to the guillotine.

"(The story) is not really about nuns," Einhorn says. "It's about the choices we make and the conviction we have — or don't have — to follow through on them."

And so, Einhorn conceived of the characters not as anonymous women in matching black and white habits, but rather as separate individuals.

"This is not some homogenous group of dour women," he says. "This a microcosm of society. All of the women are there for very different reasons. All make their decisions to die for their beliefs for very different reasons."

And all, he says, have their own fears as they approach the guillotine.

"Everybody fears death," Einhorn says. And there's no glossing over that fear. And as a good storyteller, he's striving to make sure that emotion feels palpable to the audience.

"The story has to feel real, has to be told to you immediately and directly," he says. "That's my job."

jvanryzin@statesman.com; 445-3699

'Dialogues of the Carmelites'

When: 7:30 p.m. Wednesday and Friday, 3 p.m. April 26.

Where: Dell Hall, Long Center, 701 W. Riverside Drive.

Cost: $20-$175

Information: www.austinlyricopera.org