La voix humaine

Album by Francis Poulenc & Julia Migenes & Orchestre national de France & Georges Prêtre

La voix humaine is a one-act opera by the French composer Francis Poulenc, premiered in 1959. Scored for a single soprano accompanied by a small orchestra and an unseen telephone interlocutor, the work combines lyrical vocal writing with harmonies and orchestral colours characteristic of mid-20th-century French style, and it stands in Poulenc's catalogue as a compact, psychologically intense monodrama exploring themes of solitude and modern communication.