About the work
Francis Poulenc's „La voix humaine" („The Human Voice") was premiered at the Paris Opéra-Comique in 1959. The one-act „tragédie lyrique" is based on the monodrama by Jean Cocteau and is an opera for a single singer: the last telephone conversation of an abandoned woman with the man who is leaving her. Denise Duval sang the premiere.
Plot
A woman — called only „Elle" (She) — conducts on the telephone the last conversation with her lover, who has left her after a long relationship and will marry another the next day. The whole opera consists of her side of this call. Again and again the connection breaks, strange voices intrude on the line, she has to redial. Her tone wavers between hard-won composure, tender memory, small lies — she pretends to be calm and to have been out — and breaking despair. Gradually it emerges how deeply wounded and alone she is, and how close she stands to collapse. The telephone cord, around which she winds herself, becomes an image of her dependence. At the end, the receiver at her ear, only the repeated „I love you" remains — then silence.
Cultural significance
„La voix humaine" is one of the most harrowing works of music theatre for a solo voice and one of the greatest challenges for dramatic sopranos, who carry the stage alone for fifty minutes. Poulenc's finely nerved music, following the inflection of speech, made the work a classic of the modern repertoire. It is performed worldwide and has been filmed several times.