La Voix humaine New York Performances

Francis Poulenc’s *La Voix humaine* is a one-act, roughly 40-minute opera that compresses an entire breakup into a single phone call, heard from the woman’s side only. Adapted from Jean Cocteau’s play, it treats technology as a conduit for intimacy and for distortion, with the orchestra translating what the line will not carry. At David Geffen Hall, Barbara Hannigan performs with the New York Philharmonic, joined by Clemens Malinowski and visual artist Etienne Démoulin in a staging shaped by rehearsal craft and image-making. In New York, the piece reads as a mid‑century portrait of urban solitude, still current in an age of mediated speech.