La Voix Humaine

About

Based on Jean Cocteau's play of the same name, La Voix Humaine (translated into English as "The Human Voice") was adapted into a one-act opera for one soprano by Francis Poulenc. The opera portrays an emotionally charged phone conversation between a woman and her ex-lover, who abandoned her three days earlier to marry someone else. The audience only hears her side of the conversation, and through that bears witness to her emotional downward spiral. The opera was first performed in Paris in 1959 by soprano Denise Duval. La Voix Humaine is also sometimes adapted as a play.