La Voix Humaine

Synopsis

La voix humaine is a dialogue, but one in which the audience only ever hears one voice, as a woman and her lover agree to part during a single telephone conversation. Poulenc, in his most famous operatic work, creates a master piece out of the woman's growing realisation that it is all over, combined with her darkly comic frustrations with the telephone as a means of communication. While the central character of this piece is on the receiving end of a highly charged emotional break-up, she is neither passive nor pliant. While the man may have the upper hand in the romance, the strength of character, humanity and humour is definitely with the woman.

Our Review:

13 March 2013

For its latest offering Opera North is touring a double bill of short works that at first sight may seem an unlikely pairing. La Voix Humaine composed in 1958 is a solo piece centering on a woman during a fraught telephone call as she tries to cling on to her lover. In Dido and Aeneas, a 17th century piece we are taken back to ancient Carthage.

Putting two very different operatic pieces together is risky. Does it dilute the evening robbing an audience of the richness of a full length work? Within such a short space of time can the composer, singers and director make each piece satisfying in its own right; not distracting from the other so that the whole evening can become greater than the sum of its parts?

Well, cleverly the Director Aletta Collins links these two pieces about forsaken women through costume, a dressing table, a bottle of pills and some very cunning mirror images. And doubling as choreographer she ensures the operas move with a theatricality e...

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