· Classical
Poulenc's "La voix humaine" to be held in Armenia for the first time
The Armenian premier of the famous mono-opera " The Human Voice" (La voix humaine) by Francis Poulenc based on Jean Cocteau's work will be held at A. Spendiaryan Opera and Ballet theatre on July 7 at 7.00 p.m. The title role in the mono-opera plays Varsenik Avanyan, mezzo-soprano, the soloist of the same opera theatre. Director: Davit Hakobyan, piano accompaniment: Vasil Rolich.
La Voix humaine, an unusual work subtitled “Lyric Tragedy”, was created ten years after Dialogues of the Carmelites. Francis Poulenc composed this operatic monologue for Denise Duval, his favorite singer, who created the role under the direction of Georges Prêtre, with staging and scenery by Jean Cocteau, who also wrote the libretto. Putting to music his friend Cocteau’s monodrama, in which the telephone becomes the main character in a sentimental drama, was an extraordinary tour de force for the composer. How could interest be maintained during this long monologue by a woman left by her lover whom she tries to win back in a phone conversation interrupted by technical glitches? Only Arnold Schönberg had attempted a similar experience in 1924 with his monodrama Erwartung, another monologue by a woman looking for her lover.
What new musical solutions could be brought to this unprecedented dissection of the lover’s complaint addressed to an invisible interlocutor, to this passion stripped bare through song? Of the 780 bars in the score, 186 are written for voice alone. Poulenc wanted to give the song the same freedom as spoken discourse, favoring a transparent orchestration that leaves the voice uncovered. The melodic curve matches all the emotions tearing apart the heroine: love, hate, brutal despair, regret. Tonal ambiguity expresses the imbalance born out of this “pain etched into the work’s fibres”, according to Denise Duval, the role’s creator. The orchestra amplifies the dramatic intensity assigned to singing and ensures an emotional unity with the use of recurrent motifs. It thus plays the role of the absent lover by suggesting the tenor of his responses that punctuate the heroine’s tormented recitative. The composer indicates that “the work should bathe in the greatest orchestral sensuality”.
Clearly, its success is based on the diction and emotional commitment of the singer, who “must have suffered from waiting in vain in order to play this work of experienced distress” (Denise Duval).
What new musical solutions could be brought to this unprecedented dissection of the lover’s complaint addressed to an invisible interlocutor, to this passion stripped bare through song? Of the 780 bars in the score, 186 are written for voice alone. Poulenc wanted to give the song the same freedom as spoken discourse, favoring a transparent orchestration that leaves the voice uncovered. The melodic curve matches all the emotions tearing apart the heroine: love, hate, brutal despair, regret. Tonal ambiguity expresses the imbalance born out of this “pain etched into the work’s fibres”, according to Denise Duval, the role’s creator. The orchestra amplifies the dramatic intensity assigned to singing and ensures an emotional unity with the use of recurrent motifs. It thus plays the role of the absent lover by suggesting the tenor of his responses that punctuate the heroine’s tormented recitative. The composer indicates that “the work should bathe in the greatest orchestral sensuality”.
Clearly, its success is based on the diction and emotional commitment of the singer, who “must have suffered from waiting in vain in order to play this work of experienced distress” (Denise Duval).
