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Suzan Hanson brings immediacy, authenticity to Long Beach Opera's 'La Voix Humaine

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Suzan Hanson brings immediacy, authenticity to Long Beach Opera's 'La Voix Humaine

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The phone rings. The opera begins.

That's an unwanted scenario that plays out nightly in opera houses around the world in this distracted age of cellphones. It is also the cue for the entrance of Elle in Francis Poulenc's 1958 monodrama, "La Voix Humaine," a one-way conversation of a woman on the telephone with the lover who has left her.

At Saturday night's performance (the opera runs though April 17), Suzan Hanson could have been a glamorously drunk and disheveled Liz, on the phone to Dick Burton. This is a career-capping performance by a soprano capable of making bargain-basement opera (at not exactly bargain-basement ticket prices) matter.

The next obstacle for Hanson is the English translation. Every note Poulenc wrote for his 50-minute opera has a French accent. "Voix Humaine" is not the sound of any woman's voice but of this and only this French woman's voice. Translation vulgarizes a work in which vulgarity is in already too easy reach.

Finally, there is the issue of intimacy. The opera is by its nature painfully intimate. Our eavesdropping on a woman's loss of self-possession can seem humiliatingly voyeuristic in close quarters, as though we are listening through a neighboring thin wall. Indeed, Elle, on a party line, makes clear her need for privacy.

Hanson's approach is not particularly novel. Actresses fall apart on stage often enough, as do opera singers on the lyric stage. We've also, over the years, seen Hanson in a vast range of roles - whether Medea, Lady Macbeth or Pat Nixon - in stagings traditional and unconventional. Her versatility is remarkable, even if some characters suit her better than others.

As Elle, she has no use for pretense. The words are hers; the conversation is hers. In English with piano, she has no place to hide vocally or theatrically. Yet with her flawless articulation and vocal nuance true to every dramatic utterance, Hanson produces a raw immediacy that adds a remarkable authenticity.

How this "Voix Humaine" fits into the bigger arts picture is also fascinating. One could see the one-woman Samuel Beckett plays written in Paris not long after Poulenc's opera - and coincidentally being acted by Lisa Dwan at the Broad Stage in Santa Monica (where Long Beach Opera will mount its next production in June) - as a reductive reaction to "Voix Humaine." Yet, ironically, Hanson's utter lack of pretense of the performance made her, I thought, the greater, purer, more believable Beckett figure.

The most amusing was Satie's brief "Three Distinguished Waltzes of a Jaded Dandy," smartly played by Van Grysperre with Buck wittily acting the part of the dandy who warns us, among other things, of a "newspaper abandoning half of itself."

Yes, that's a worry everywhere as the modern world figures out what to do, and Long Beach Opera abandons the first half of an opera evening. But with its extraordinarily compelling "Voix Humaine," the company compensates with proof, at least, that however much the technology for transmitting the human voice changes over time, the voice itself is what counts.

Where: Federal Bar's Underground Club, 102 Pine Ave., Long Beach

When: 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, 3 p.m. Sunday

Running time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

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Suzan Hanson brings immediacy, authenticity to Long Beach Opera's 'La Voix Humaine'

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The phone rings. The opera begins. That's an unwanted scenario that plays out nightly in opera houses around the world in this distracted age of cellphones. It is also the cue for the entrance of Elle in Francis Poulenc's 1958 monodrama, "La Voix Humaine," a one-way conversation of a woman on the telephone with the lover who has left her.

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Long Beach Opera revives Poulenc La Voix Humaine -- Orange County Register

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Long Beach Opera revives Poulenc La Voix Humaine -- Orange County Register

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For its latest musical adventure, Long Beach Opera requisitioned the basement of an old bank building downtown, vault and all. Now known as the Underground Club (part of the Federal Bar), the space operates effectively enough as a black box theater. Patrons were seated at tables Saturday night and served sliders as part of the ticket price. Drinks from the nearby bar were apparently extra.

All were assembled for a little ditty called "La Voix Humaine" ("The Human Voice") by Francis Poulenc. Composed in 1958 and based closely on a play of the same name by Jean Cocteau, the opera (or, more precisely, tragédie lyrique) is performed while its only character (Elle is her name, though we never hear it) is on the telephone, in the painful throes of a breakup.

Soprano Suzan Hanson starred. She's been a regular with the company for almost 15 years and a favorite with its audiences, a brave, committed and believable actress and a nimble and forceful singer. We were in good hands. The orchestra part here was played on piano by Kristof Van Grysperre, who regularly conducts with the company.

Poulenc wrote the work for Denise Duval, a close collaborator of the composer's who died in January at age 94. Much of it is sparely scored, the soprano singing alone in speech-song, the orchestra/piano punctuating or commenting tersely. The piece does rise on occasion to full-blown melody, however, and once or twice just about to the level of aria. Motifs are repeated, going round and round as if trapped with the soprano in her emotional dead end.

She is suicidal, and attempted it a day or two before the phone call, we come to learn. He is leaving her, though she agrees it's probably for the best. But not all is in the key of anguish. There are a lovely series of Impressionistic chords that we come back to whenever Elle reminisces on the better days with her lover.

Andreas Mitisek, LBO's general director, was the stage director and production designer. You can't easily update this opera and have your soprano on an iPhone; it is integral to the plot, such as it is, that Elle is on a party line (look it up, kids) and is interrupted and cut off during the course of events.

The production was set in her apartment, then, in the late '50s or '60s. Hanson wore a black nightgown and dressing gown. Her hair was a mess and she was drinking. There was a bottle of pills around and a man's clothes too, which she put to her nose now and then, to remember. The telephone was red, with a dial.

Simple enough and simply, effectively delivered. With Hanson subtly negotiating the emotional ebb and flow, and without overstating the character's desperation, we became slowly wrapped up in her situation, eavesdropping on her phone call. The rich amplitude of Hanson's climaxes was earned, the quieter passages were clearly articulated and enunciated. Supertitles were absent and not needed. Van Grysperre supported her warmly, precisely, eloquently. Sometimes, understatement is a virtue.

"La Voix Humaine" is usually done as a double bill. Instead, Long Beach Opera offered a first half (with dinner served) of chamber music and song by Poulenc and Erik Satie, performed by baritone Robin Buck, violist Seulgee Park, cellist Christopher E. Brown and Van Grysperre. Good enough.

Contact the writer: 714-796-6811 or tmangan@ocregister

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Long Beach Opera revives Poulenc's 'La Voix Humaine'

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For its latest musical adventure, Long Beach Opera requisitioned the basement of an old bank building downtown, vault and all. Now known as the Underground Club (part of the Federal Bar), the space operates effectively enough as a black box theater. Patrons were seated at tables Saturday night and served sliders as part of the ticket price.