FULL La Voix humaine (Poulenc) & Point d’orgue (Escaich) Paris 2021 Petibon Bou Dubois

La Voix humaine, Jean Cocteau, Francis Poulenc © Ed. Ricordi S.A.

Point d’orgue, Thierry Escaich / Olivier Py © 2020 by Gérard Billaudot Éditeur

The Théâtre des Champs-Elysées had the ambition to commission the writing of a new Opera which would be the sequel to La Voix Humaine.

Thus was born ‘Point d’Orgue’ composed by Thierry Escaich on the text of Olivier Py.

The world premiere took place on March 5, 2021 without an audience and behind closed doors, but fortunately captured so that you can now discover this work.

In 1958, two years after Dialogues of the Carmelites, Poulenc composed The Human Voice, a work in one act and for a single female character, alone and facing the distress of the break-up of love. A composer with multiple facets and talents, with a rich orchestral writing nourished by echoes of the sacred, Thierry Escaich has here imposed himself to compose a piece that mirrors Poulenc’s own. The challenge is to imagine the continuation of Poulenc’s monologue in a renewed dialogue between Him and Her. Inspired by Cocteau’s words, those of Olivier Py, a man of the theatre with modern forms of expression, will offer a humanistic and humanist vision of the couple’s dialogue. The trio of Patricia Petibon, Olivier Py and Jérémie Rhorer were the first creators of the successful production of Francis Poulenc’s Dialogues of the Carmelites, premiered at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in 2013. That same year, Jérémie Rhorer, trained by Thierry Escaich in his formative years, directed the creation of his opera Claude Gueux at the Opéra de Lyon, a production directed by Olivier Py and in which Jean-Sébastien Bou played the title role. The desire to bring them all together to work on a new project became obvious as they shared a firm commitment to contemporary creation. It is dialogue that is at stake here, the dialogue of two people on the verge of breaking away, the dialogue of words and the dialogue of two sensitive and profoundly modern musicians.