Spoilers ahead! The finale of Dialogues des Carmélites is devastating enough purely as audio, and I didn’t think anyone would ever make it even more harrowing than its various iterations in Robert Carsen productions. But Barrie Kosky‘s incredible production widened and universalized the ending, making it an unequivocal reference to the murdered and the displaced in conflicts more recent and more current than the French Revolution.

In Act III, an explosion blew a hole in the convent wall and when it came time for the executions there was no sign of a guillotine, with its accompanying stage management dilemmas. Instead, each sister one by one walked outside through the destroyed wall, shoes in hand, and after each slice of the guillotine, a pair of shoes would be flung back through the hole, forming a pile on the emptying stage. The first time it happens you gasp, and then the cumulative factor is overwhelming. I sat in my seat for some time afterwards, dead still, unable to speak.