The most tantalizing kind of urban eavesdropping is a phone call overheard on the street. That it reflects just one side of a conversation only emphasizes the absence of whoever is on the other end of the line.
Such is the fascination of Francis Poulenc’s operatic monodrama “La Voix Humaine,” which like the Jean Cocteau play it is based on stages one side of a breakup call rife with emotional and technological complications. It is onstage at David Geffen Hall this week, in a New York Philharmonic performance directed and conducted by, as well as starring, the soprano Barbara Hannigan.
At the Philharmonic, “La Voix Humaine” is paired with another piece defined by felt absence: Richard Strauss’s “Metamorphosen.” Written for string orchestra, Strauss’s piece was composed at the end of World War II and contends with the ghosts of German culture, destroyed by the Nazi rule and bombings alike. Its title is inspired by Goethe’s poetry, and the music, after swells of slowly constricting dissonance and brief reaching gestures, fleetingly quotes the funeral march of Beethoven’s “Eroica” Symphony.
Hannigan led “Metamorphosen” with sinuous and expansive gestures. Her arms crossed her body to sketch out the patterns before spreading wide, hands hanging loose like a marionette’s. Her movements were more stylized than precise, and the opening moments of the piece sounded somewhat clumsy before it settled. She brought out with languid clarity the piece’s mournful tenderness, but she also made her presence overly known. Something of Strauss’s subtlety was lost as a result.
If Hannigan didn’t recede sufficiently in “Metamorphosen,” her self-conscious stylization was put to excellent use in “La Voix Humaine.” The nameless woman’s attempts at breezy intimacy give way to manipulations and increasingly brittle fantasy as she realizes that her lover is not returning. Wrong numbers and dropped calls plague the exchange, and at the midpoint of the opera, she reveals that she attempted suicide. It ends with her begging for him to hang up. She knows she’s unable.
Hannigan has sung this part before, but in her multitasking role here she orchestrates the experience, binding the ensemble to her voice and gestures. What results is an astonishing technical and physical feat from her. She embodies and directs Poulenc’s music with rigorous choreographic precision and splendid vocal variety.
Her production includes video by Clemens Malinowski that places Hannigan in and out of focus, doubling and superimposing her image on itself, closing in on her mouth or her hands. Facing away from the audience and toward the orchestra and the big screen, Hannigan’s Elle is always conversing with herself as she mugs and poses for the camera, moving like a mime or a jazz dancer. She punches toward the lens. She chases its eye as it attempts to pan away from her. You get the sense of a character who is so used to performing that, even in her anguish, she cannot resist a peek in the mirror to wonder, “Am I still pretty when I cry?”
This character may be in a tailspin, but she is still a powerful emotional operator. For those of us who find our eyes wandering to our own image during FaceTime calls, this combination of sincerity and conceit is damningly familiar.
Often in stagings of “La Voix Humaine,” audience members are aware that there is a voice they do not hear. Hannigan’s version suggests that perhaps there is no one on the other side. The performance of self is all there is. Hers is an intelligent, off-putting and utterly spellbinding production, with a vicious irony that implicates and fascinates.
New York Philharmonic
This program repeats through Saturday at David Geffen Hall, Manhattan; nyphil.org.
The post Review: She’s Conducting an Opera While Singing Its Starring Role appeared first on New York Times.
