Poulenc Double Bill
‘No sir, you will command me no more...’. A woman on the brink of ending it all; another just beginning
Performance Dates
About the opera
A woman on the brink of ending it all; another just beginning
Director Laurent Pelly joins conductor Robin Ticciati for a French double-bill that opens with tragic heartbreak and ends with a riotous, surreal comedy.
Alone in her apartment, a woman talks to her former lover on the telephone. She teases, flirts, promises, lies and pleads. Finally, telling him again and again that she loves him, she drops the receiver…
Poulenc’s La Voix humaine is opera distilled down to its essence: a musical monologue of searing intensity.
Frustrated with her life as a housewife, Thérèse transforms herself into a man and heads out into the world, leaving her husband at home to take care of the baby-making. Exploding with musical invention, combining everything from patter songs to Broadway numbers, chorales and lyrical arias, Poulenc’s Les Mamelles de Tirésias is a giddy romp of an opera that throws questions of politics, gender and society up into the air and watches them shatter into hundreds of glittering pieces.
A new production for Festival 2022. Sung in French with English supertitles.
Creative team
Conductor
Robin Ticciati
Director
Laurent Pelly
Set Designer
Caroline Ginet
Costume Designer
Laurent Pelly in collaboration with Jean-Jacques Delmotte
Lighting Designer
Urs Schönebaum
London Philharmonic Orchestra
Leader
Vesselin Gellev
Piano
Matthew Fletcher
Celeste
Steven Maughan
The Glyndebourne Chorus
Chorus Director
Aidan Oliver
Assistant Conductor
Adam Hickox
Music preparation
Matthew Fletcher
Steven Maughan
Language Coach
Florence Daguerre de Hureaux
Assistant Director
Paul Higgins
Staff Director
Jeanne Pansard-Besson
Supertitles
Based on a translation by
Richard Neel
Cast includes
Elle
Stéphanie d’Oustrac
Theatre Director
Gyula Orendt
Thérèse
Elsa Benoit
The Husband
Régis Mengus
Monsieur Presto
Christophe Gay
Monsieur Lacouf
François Piolino
The Policeman
Gyula Orendt
The Parisian Journalist
Loïc Félix
The Son
James Way
The Newspaper Seller
Julie Pasturaud
The Elegant Lady
Rhiain Taylor*
Fortune Teller
Elsa Benoit
A Woman
Amy Holyland*
The Bearded Man
Michael Ronan*
* Soloist from The Glyndebourne Chorus
Musical editions: La Voix humaine – Ricordi Paris | Les Mamelles de Tirésias – Édition Heugel Wise Music Group
Illustration © Katie Ponder
To find out more about production support for Festival 2023
contact our Director of Development, Helen McCarthy – helen.mccarthy@glyndebourne.com
