You know how sometimes the coat-check clerk hands you the wrong coat? In the unproduced Georges Bernanos screenplay Dialogues des Carmélites, set in the bloodiest days of the French Revolution, it’s suggested that a person might, by the same token, die the wrong death. A fey notion, but in Francis Poulenc’s gripping opera it takes on surprising power. Early on, the stern old Prioress Madame de Croissy dies uttering such blasphemies that her subalterns refuse to let her flock see her. At the close, the young Blanche de la Force, a timid soul formerly in a chronic panic, joins her sister nuns at the foot of the guillotine in a state of serene grace. An instant classic from the mid–20th century, Poulenc’s Dialogues des Carmélites shows no signs of losing its grip on contemporary audiences. As you’d expect, the Vienna State Opera has fielded a top-drawer cast headed by Nicole Car as Blanche. Bertrand de Billy conducts. The production is by Magdalena Fuchsberger. —Matthew Gurewitsch