Elle – Lyric Opera of Melbourne

Overview

This month Elle opens, an emotional new work from Lyric Opera of Melbourne, conducted by Pat Miller and directed by Nathan Gilkes. The legendary composer Francis Poulenc penned its music for Jean Cocteau's 1959 libretto of his 1930 play, La Voix Humaine. 

The one-act chamber opera consists simply of a series of conversations a woman conducts over the phone with her unseen lover. The audience eavesdrops on these, her last words to the man she loves; he's to marry another woman next day. The talk is interrupted by Paris's notoriously poor telephone service of the era, an effective metaphor for emotional disruption.