LA VOIX HUMAINE - Seattle Opera

Long Story Short
A relationship of five years will end when this
phone call ends...so let’s keep talking.
Who’s Who?
Elle (“She”) is young, elegant, and unhappy
about being dumped.
On the phone with her is a man she calls “Chéri”
(the cherished one), as well as telephone
operators and miscellaneous other callers. She
speaks with Chéri about her friend Marthe and
the dog.
Where and When?
A woman’s bedroom, probably in Paris, midtwentieth
century.
What’s Going On?
He left her three nights ago, and tonight they’re
on the phone, trying to say goodbye. But how to
end it properly—particularly when it’s so hard to
get a good connection? The call keeps getting
dropped, random people keep eavesdropping on
the conversation, and the two of them have a
hard time telling one another the truth.
“Yes, I had a hard time sleeping last night, and
took a pill,” she tells him. “Then, this morning,
Marthe came by early.” She goes on to lie about
what she’s wearing, and they are almost flirting
when once again the line cuts out. She calls his
house, only to discover that he’s not there—he
must have been calling from somewhere else.
When he calls back, and continues to lie—“Oh,
that music you hear? No, I’m not at a party...
that must be the neighbors, playing their
gramophone”—she is emboldened to tell him
the truth: she isn’t dressed up, she hasn’t had
dinner, and she didn’t take one pill, she took
all of them. When Marthe came, she brought a
doctor, and the woman’s suicide attempt failed.
But after five years of a relationship, it’s terrible
to be alone; even the woman’s dog understands
something is terribly wrong. When she comes to
understand that her lover has lied to her only in
an attempt to lessen the hurt, his kindness gives
her the strength to tell him, “Go ahead, hurry,
hang up. Do it quickly. I love you....”
History of a Bad Connection
If you’ve had trouble with your cell phone carrier,
or an unreliable wireless router, you’ll identify
with the protagonist of La voix humaine, whose
attempt to make an important phone call is
continually thwarted by the crummy phone
service where she lives. Much of the dramatic
tension and humor of La voix humaine come
from the constant interruptions, which were a
familiar feature of urban telephone systems into
the mid-twentieth century.
This opera takes place long before area codes,
back in the days of exchange names; for instance,
Elle, trying to dial her Chéri, asks her operator
to dial “Auteuil 04/7.” Not until after World War
II did modern telephone numbering systems
come into use, and it took decades for them to
become ubiquitous. Although Poulenc wrote the
opera in the late ’50s, he was clearly delighted
to remember the unpredictable phone service of
his youth—witness the rattling xylophone in his
score each time the woman’s telephone rings.
About the Writer and
CoMPoser
La voix humaine is a play written in 1930 by
Jean Cocteau and set to music in 1959 by Francis
Poulenc. Cocteau and Poulenc, who first met in
1917, were both major figures
in twentieth-century art, music,
poetry, theater, dance, and film.
Given their varied interests,
limitless energy, and the
extraordinary times they lived
through, the world of French
culture swirled around these
two figures for four decades.
When they first met, Cocteau
(born 1889) was a hyperactive
young artist and arts publicist,
and Poulenc (born 1899) was
a musically inclined teenager
from a well-to-do family. The
Rite of Spring had turned the
Paris arts scene on its head a
few years previously: Stravinsky’s
wild score so polarized
the musical world that when
Poulenc applied to study at the conservative
Paris Conservatoire, the composition teacher
who judged his work screamed, “I see you’re a
follower of the Stravinsky and Satie gang. Well,
goodbye!” and threw him out the door. The
hedonistic lifestyle associated with the Ballets
Russes, and others in the world of the arts at
the time of the World War I, emboldened these
two artists, both of whom were gay, to pursue
authentic love lives, whatever society might
think. Both had on-again-off-again relationships
with the Catholic Church; both endured
the Fascist take-over of France during World
War II (and both have been criticized for not
standing up heroically to fight the Nazis); and
both died in 1963, well-respected old lions who
had become role models to later generations of
artists.
Cocteau may be best known in the United
States today for his films, particularly his dreamy
Beauty and the Beast and his three Orpheusinspired
films: Blood of a Poet, Orpheus, and The
Testament of Orpheus (all of which star his lover,
Jean Marais). But he was equally productive as
artist, poet, novelist, critic, and designer. He
wrote La voix humaine in 1929, the same year
that he described his recovery from addiction
in the book Opium, Diary of a Detoxification.
“Portrait of Jean Cocteau (with multiple hands),” Philippe Halsman, 1948
2012/13 Season at Seattle Opera 27