Sometimes, there are operas you don’t really care to know anything about.  

Dialogues of the Carmelites. A bunch of nuns. Yep, I’m SO not interested in that after 12 years of Catholic school. I’m over nuns.

Of course, at that point I didn’t know the story. 

Early on in my opera journey I vaguely learned that they all get their heads cut off. People I would run into at opera events who learned about my business would snarkily ask if I a had a bracelet for this opera. I’m sure they thought it would be a tacky impossibility with head beads and lots of blood droplets. Would there be a guillotine charm? I was convinced this would not be a sell-able bracelet and that no one would ever ask for it seriously.

I saw the opera in a local production and later followed up on the story beyond the opera which is , not surprisingly, horrific, yet faith affirming. 

This is what I really love about opera, the way it opens a window onto a world you know nothing about and gives you the opportunity to learn and understand things in different ways. These nuns were real, they were real martyrs and hey are credited, through their sacrifice, with ending the reign of terror of the French Revolution.

One day, a frequent customer wrote that she needed a Dialogues of the Carmelites Bracelet as a gift for someone special. What seemed implausible suddenly appeared to me possible. In a light bulb moment I saw a way to express this story through its beauty rather than its gruesomeness.

I could have made this a one off special order but I’m taking the risk that other people connect to this story in a special way or will do at some point in their opera journey. To learn more about the details of the bracelet inspired by Dialogues of the Carmelites, click here: The Martyrs