The story about the martyrdom of the nuns from Compiègne was first told by one of them, mother Marie, who had survived the terror of the French Revolution and published her memoirs. The nuns were then proclaimed saints, and that inspired the German writer Gertrude von le Fort to tell their story. She wrote The last on the Scaffold, a novella of a ghostly presentiment (1931), which describes the destiny of religion in totalitarian regimes. The numerous attempts at adapting the novella into a drama or a script for a film all failed, until Georges Bernanos wrote his novel, adding several more characters and many details. Still, the story became worldwide famous only after Francis Poulenc made his opera-version of Les dialogues des Carmélites, commissioned by Ricordi for La Scala in Milan, where it was world premiered in 1957. The basic plot is very simple and in a letter written in 1953, Poulenc speaks of a very ethereal orchestration, which will allow the complete clearness of the words, emphasizing that the nuances in the text are much more important than the story in general. The artist who was in his youth labeled avant-gardist, with the impeccable ear for melody and sense of ironic humor, was suitable for the fashion after the First World War, which demanded naïveté and primitiveness. Still, Poulenc ended his career with the works which were fully outside any fashion with the tonal music which is not ashamed of feelings, pain, even sentimentality. Dialogues of the Carmelites belong to this last stage of his work, dedicated to his models, Verdi, Monteverdi, Debussy and Mussorgsky.