Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino: La voix humaine Tickets | Event Dates & Schedule | GoComGo.com

La voix humaine Tickets

Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino, Florence, Italy
La voix humaine
La voix humaine
La voix humaine
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Available Dates: 14 - 22 Mar, 2026 (3 events)
Important Info
Type: Opera
City: Florence, Italy

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Cast
Performers
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Creators
Composer: Béla Bartók
Composer: Francis Poulenc
Librettist: Béla Balázs
Author: Charles Perrault
Director: Claus Guth
Poet: Jean Cocteau
Overview

In 1930, Jean Cocteau had brought to the stage of the Comédie-Française La voix humaine, a drama about the loneliness and despair of a young woman abandoned by her lover. The proposal to perform an opera on that subject came to Francis Poulenc from Hervé Dugardin, then director of the Paris branch of Casa Ricordi. The composer, who had already set Jean Cocteau's texts to music, gladly accepted the challenge of adapting an exquisitely theatrical text to the demands of music, and his version of La voix humaine debuted at the Théâtre national de l'Opéra-Comique on 6 February 1959. The only character on stage, the protagonist - generically referred to as Elle (she) - talks on the phone to her lover whose voice we never hear but whose answers are guessed from Elle's change of tone. Engaged in a long monologue attached to the telephone wire, Elle is a complex vocal role, somewhere between prose and musical theatre that requires equal vocal and acting skills. Indeed, everything in Poulenc's La voix humaine is in the voice, in the chameleon-like ability to render every nuance of the protagonist's emotional state: the apparent initial calm, doubt, incomprehension, loneliness, agitation, despair, torment, up to the final heartbroken ‘je t'aime’ that closes the telephone call and the opera in a peremptory and disconsolate manner.

History
Premiere of this production: 06 February 1959, Opéra-Comique, Paris

La voix humaine (The Human Voice) is a forty-minute, one-act opera for soprano and orchestra composed by Francis Poulenc in 1958. The work is based on the play of the same name by Jean Cocteau, who, along with French soprano Denise Duval, worked closely with Poulenc in preparation for the opera's premiere. Poulenc's tragédie lyrique was first performed at the Théâtre National de l'Opéra-Comique in Paris on 6 February 1959, with Duval singing the female role and Georges Prêtre conducting; the scenery, costumes and direction were by Cocteau.

Synopsis

The curtain opens to reveal a bedroom where a woman (Elle) lies unmoving on the ground. She changes position once before finally rising. Although she makes to leave the room, the phone rings and she returns to answer it. The woman receives two wrong numbers before her ex-lover is able to get through to her. She lies to him, saying that she went out with her friend Marthe the previous night, and that she took one pill to help her fall asleep when she returned. The couple discuss their past relationship, and Elle blames herself for their problems, claiming, "Tout est ma faute." Throughout their conversation, they experience numerous telephone problems, and their connection finally cuts out completely. When Elle calls her lover's home phone, she discovers that he is not there and assumes that he is at a restaurant. He calls her back, and Elle reveals that she has lied during their conversation; instead of going out with Marthe the previous night, she took twelve sleeping pills in an attempted suicide. She then called Marthe, who arrived with a doctor to save her. Elle suddenly hears music in the background, and she grows suspicious that her lover is at the home of his new girlfriend. She expresses her suspicions to him several times until the end of the opera, but he never admits to his true location. Elle also reveals her obsession with the telephone, explaining that she has slept with it in her bed for the past two nights. Their connection fails once again, and Elle panics. Her lover calls her back once more, and she informs him that she now has the telephone cord wrapped around her neck. Telling him she loves him over and over, she sinks into her bed and drops the receiver, possibly strangling herself with its cord in the process.

Venue Info

Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino - Florence
Location   Piazza Vittorio Gui, 1

Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino is a major opera house in Florence and the main concert venue of the international festival "Maggio Musicale Fiorentino".

The white marble veined with green of the Baptistery of San Giovanni, the brickwork of the dome of Santa Maria del Fiore and finally the dazzling gold of the precious paintings that have made the city of Tuscany one of the world capitals of art: the materials and colors of the Renaissance they meet at the Teatro del Maggio to celebrate the power of music, and the enchantment of melodrama, right in the city where this exceptional form of theater was born. Conceived by the architect Paolo Desideri of the ABDR studio, the “new house” of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino rises at the meeting point between the monumental center and the Parco delle Cascine, the green lung of the city.

An important connective function also reaffirmed by the vast system of open areas that can be reached through the two areas of the city and the different volumes of the building. Moreover, the proximity to the Stazione Leopolda helps to create a cultural pole of European importance.

Above a sort of wide base, a sloping skirting, there are the large music rooms and the enigmatic volume of the 35 meter high stage tower. Three rooms, which can work simultaneously: the 1800-seat opera theater, distributed between the stalls, boxes and gallery, an outdoor 2000-seat auditorium and finally an auditorium, dedicated to maestro Zubin Mehta, which varies its capacity from 500 to 1000 spectators.

As in a great musical instrument, the walls of the main hall are covered in pear wood to guarantee perfect acoustics. A dense network of thin copper chains also helps to transport the sound without distortion. The stage has a depth doubled compared to the average of Italian and foreign theaters and, thanks to its flexibility, is able to accommodate in its side pockets up to two sets ready to be moved during the intervals. The Cavea is positioned in the theater’s roof to complement and conclude the extensive system of squares, terraces and belvedere.

Its usability is therefore not limited to representations only, but is extended to the entire day to turn its stone steps into real urban salons. Inaugurated on December 21, 2011 with the Ninth Symphony of Ludwig van Beethoven directed by Zubin Mehta, the Teatro del Maggio is the permanent venue of the Orchestra and Chorus of the Maggio Musicale Fiorentino and has already hosted Masters such as Claudio Abbado, Riccardo Muti, Gustavo Dudamel , Daniele Gatti, Fabio Luisi, leading groups such as the Berliner Philharmoniker, the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra and the National de France Orchestras. Among the many artists who performed there are Alessandra Ferri, Mariella Devia, Sumi Jo, Anja Harteros, Aldo Ciccolini, Uto Ughi, Maurizio Pollini, Krystian Zimerman, Gregory Kunde, Ambrogio Maestri. In 2014 he received the National Award for the best architectural work made in Italy in the last 5 years.

Important Info
Type: Opera
City: Florence, Italy

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

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