Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
LA VOIX HUMAINE

Monologue in one act on a libretto by Jean Cocteau

A production of the Théâtre Français de la Musique
Théâtre Impérial de Compiègne
Pierre Jourdan, director

Format: 4:3
English sub-titles
Duration: 65 minutes

Cast:
ANNE-SOPHIE SCHMIDT, soprano

ORCHESTRE OSTINATO
Jean-Luc Tingaud, conductor



Francis Poulenc's one-character opera La Voix humaine (1958), a setting of the homonymous
play by Jean Cocteau, explores the psychological complexities of an unnamed woman as she
experiences the end of a romantic relationship. During the forty-minute work, she sings in a
declamatory manner into a telephone, which serves as a sign of the unrevealed man at the other end.
Poulenc uses musical motives to underscore the woman's changing emotional states as she recalls her
past relationship. The musical dramaturgy in this work resignifies Debussy's impressionist symbolism
by collapsing devices used in Pelléas et Mélisande in a language that shifts between octatonicism,
chromaticism, harmonic and melodic whole tone passages, and diatonicism. This late work recontextualizes
elements in Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmélites (1953-56), and the end of the opera provides a theme for
his Sonate pour Clarinet et Piano(1962), as Poulenc reflects on his youthful encounters with Cocteau, Erik
Satie, and Les Six.