(Dialogues of the Carmelites), FP 159, is an opera in three acts, divided into twelve scenes with linking orchestral interludes, with music and libretto by Francis Poulenc, completed in 1956. The composer's second opera, Poulenc wrote the libretto after the work of the same name by Georges Bernanos. The opera tells a fictionalised version of the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne, Carmelite nuns who, in 1794 during the closing days of the Reign of Terror during the French Revolution, were guillotined in Paris for refusing to renounce their vocation. The world première of the opera occurred (in Italian translation) on 26 January 1957 at La Scala in Milan. The première of the French-language version took place in Paris on 21 June 1957. The United States première, in English, followed in San Francisco in September 1957. Development Bernanos had been hired in 1947 to write the dialogue for a film screenplay, through Raymond Léopold Bruckberger and the scenario writer Philippe Agostini, based on the novella (literal translation, The Last on the Scaffold, or Song at the Scaffold, the published title of the English translation) by Gertrud von Le Fort. The novella is based on the story of the Martyrs of Compiègne at the monastery of Carmelite nuns in Compiègne, northern France, in the wake of the French Revolution, specifically in 1794 at the time of state seizure of the monastery's assets. It traces a fictional path from 1789 up to these events, when nuns of the Carmelite Order were guillotined. The screenplay was judged unsatisfactory for a film. Bernanos died on 5 July 1948. Subsequently, his literary executor, Albert Béguin, found this manuscript. To assist Bernanos' surviving family, Béguin sought to have the work published, and requested permission from von Le Fort for publication. In January 1949, she agreed, and donated her portion of the royalties due to her, as creator of the original story, over to Bernanos' widow and children. However, von Le Fort requested that the Bernanos work be titled differently from her own novella. Béguin chose Dialogues des Carmélites as the title for the Bernanos work, which was published in 1949. A German translation of the work, (The Blessed Fear), was published in 1951, and Zurich and Munich saw productions of Die begnadete Angst that year. The French stage premiere was by Jacques Hébertot in May 1952 at the Théâtre Hébertot. The genesis of the opera was