To contrast the magical fairytale world of Ravel’s Ma Mère L’Oye with the nightmarish anguish of Poulenc’s female protagonist in his monodrama La Voix Humaine made for bold programming. It took the audience from storytelling with its promise of happily-ever-after, to eavesdropping on a traumatic phone call that signals the breakup of a relationship.
Marking the 150th anniversary of Ravel’s birth and doing him the honour of performing his full ballet score rather than the more commonly heard suite of movements, the musicians of the BBC National Orchestra of Wales seemed to luxuriate in the mastery of Ravel, the supreme orchestrator. The principal guest conductor, Jaime Martín, coaxed out all the languidly expressive beauty, the playfulness and the wit. It was the perfect foil for the emotional turmoil of the Poulenc.
This was effectively a semi-staging of the one-act opera based on Jean Cocteau’s play, with soprano Danielle de Niese portraying the woman who, alone on a loveseat sofa, talks to the man who has jilted her, living through the dying embers of her five-year affair, hoping against hope that she can rekindle their love. De Niese conveyed all too credibly the elements of past intimacy, the self-delusion, the gradually disintegrating persona, the admission of her attempted suicide the previous night. And talking on an old-fashioned phone with a telephone cord, she could toy with using the cord as though to strangle herself just as the libretto demands, a detail lost in productions that update the conversation to use a mobile. It goes without saying that the pain of rejection is never anything but wholly contemporary.
Poulenc made it clear in his preface that he wanted the work to “bathe in the greatest orchestral sensuality” and this fine balance between the often almost matter-of-fact setting of the words and the underlying lyricism and passion was powerfully realised here, the sympathy between singer and conductor always evident. Dramatic tensions were sharply focused, Poulenc making each interruption – phone lines crossed, or cut off – heart-stopping for potentially spelling the ultimate separation.
De Niese is very much a singing actor and brought a heightened relevance to the succession of climactic moments, but it was her eschewing of too obvious histrionics that ensured this performance its essential strength.
• Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 on 11 February and then available on BBC Sounds.
