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The impact of a religious opera on a secular audience: the existential and religious importance of art

What role does art play in the life of contemporary, secularized people who are looking for existential and spiritual meaning? This was the leading question in our empirical research on the opera “Dialogues of the Carmelites” by the French composer, Francis Poulenc. First, we will sketch the philosophical debate about the relationship between religion, transcendence and art, and give a conceptual clarification of the terms existential, spiritual and religious. Second, we will present the results of our research. We studied the actual impact of the opera as performed in the Amsterdam Opera House in March 2002. We focused on the intentions of the creators and performers of the opera, and on the reception by the public. By means of a questionnaire, interviews and analysis of reviews, we examined what feelings and associations this explicitly religious opera evoked in a secular context. It is concluded that art can make people sensitive to existential questions and to a broad spirituality, in the sense of opening up to “transcendence.”