In its City Opera Vancouver incarnation (available on YouTube at City Opera Online), Francis Poulenc’s La voix humaine receives a savvy reworking that updates it right into the early 21st-century. Without losing sight of the underlying message of the original opera—technology communicates hard data a lot better than it conveys emotions—the multi-faceted Isaiah Bell has newly translated Jean Cocteau’s original French libretto to English. He has also has adapted it, swapping the gender of the opera’s only character from the original female “Elle” to an unnamed male protagonist, and conveying with canny realism the frustrations that all too often beset users of contemporary communication technology.
When La voix premiered in 1959, the telephone was primitive compared to today’s wireless smartphones, texting and Zoom calls. Stagings of Poulenc’s monodrama typically have “Elle” manhandling a bulky rotary-dial, landline phone and its long, cumbersome connecting cord, while contending with nosy neighbours on party lines, obtuse telephone operators, and bad connections.
One can empathize with “Elle” over her connectivity issues, but her male counterpart in COV’s The Human Voice faces many similar aggravations. Despite today’s advanced communication technology, even the smartest of smartphones can be plagued by lag, freeze, distortion, and dropped signals so that when Bell’s character sings, “I’ve been on hold with tech support about the wi-fi all day,” we know exactly where he’s coming from.
With a remarkably fine tenor, Bell conveys his character’s vain attempts to communicate an utter devastation that his male lover is ending their relationship. Bell’s voice, clear and immaculately on pitch right to the top of his range, has a plaintive edge he uses at moments of intense emotional interplay or eases out when less overwrought. Bell’s fine tuned performance is so perfectly married to his own sensitive and intelligent adaptation that the viewer is irrevocably drawn into the unfolding of this intensely personal drama.
Roger Parton provides outstanding pianistic support to the harrowing onstage drama. It is
