Poulenc’s one act opera, La Voix Humaine, will be presented on Sunday, September 19, 7:30 p.m., at MuCCC, 142 Atlantic Avenue, Rochester, as part of the 2021 KeyBank Rochester Fringe Festival (September 14 through 25). Tickets are $15 at rochesterfringe.com, where more information is available. Remaining tickets will be available at the door starting one hour before curtain.
Composed in 1958 by Francis Poulenc, La Voix Humaine is an intense retelling of Jean Cocteau’s play of the same name. The monodrama depicts Elle, alone in her apartment and desperately clinging to life, while the telephone is her only connection to a former lover. Between dropped calls and wrong numbers, she speaks with him and reveals her anxiety-ridden anguish over his abandonment. Elle admits her attempted suicide the previous evening and the audience witnesses her last words. Recommended for audiences 18 and older, La Voix Humaine will be performed by soprano Kerri Lynn Slominski and pianist Alex Kuczynski.
This performance will be sung in French with an English translation provided. Slominski states, “The opera personally spoke to me. Cocteau wrote the role as an anonymous woman, ‘Elle’ which in French means ‘she.’ Elle represents the vulnerability in any one of us and I really hope that this performance sheds light on the importance of mental health support and awareness.”
This will be the third collaborative performance Slominski and Kuczynski have presented at Fringe. Previously, they debuted Slominski’s operatic memoir: A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Audition: An Operatic Cabaret (2017) and Menotti’s The Telephone (2019) which earned the 2019 CITY Newspaper’s Critics Pick. Together, they have been performing throughout the Rochester area since 2015.
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