La Voix Humaine

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.