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Performers
- Ekaterina Levental mezzo-soprano
- Yoram Ish-Hurwitz piano (on tape)
- Chris Koolmees direction
Programme
- Francis PoulencLa voix humaine
A production of LEKS compagnie.
About this concert
From telephone to webcam
Sitting alone in her room, a woman video-chats with her ex, who is getting married to someone else the next day. Desperate, she makes one last attempt to hold her relationship together. He is weak, he is lying and she knows it. Inevitably, she is heading for a final break-up. Theatre maker Chris Koolmees has translated La voix humaine into the present day. In his version of Jean Cocteau’s famous theatrical monologue – set to Francis Poulenc’s incomparable music – he does not show a woman on stage talking on the phone, but a webcam girl. A glorious role for singer and actress Ekaterina Levental.
We presented this performance in collaboration with LEKS compagnie and OPERA2DAY at the Royal Theatre in The Hague in 2020. “How penetratingly Levental gives voice and face to it with her gifted mezzo, perfect diction and strong presence,” wrote the NRC. Now we bring this production by LEKS compagnie to the Paleiskerk, where the audience can get even closer to the main character.
La voix humaine in the press
“Director Chris Koolmees has strikingly updated the telephone conversation into a FaceTime call with a poor connection, making the woman’s frustrations all too palpable. We see Levental’s expressive face magnified on screen, one moment hysterically tormented, the next lifted by vain hope. These extremes carry the performance, and how penetratingly Levental gives it voice and face with her gifted mezzo, perfect diction and strong presence.”
“The screen shows her face: covered in smudges of make-up that she removes, only for them to return after the end of the hopeless conversation. Levental delivered her account of despair as compellingly in theatrical as in vocal terms; she is a magnificent singer.”
“Ekaterina Levental embodied on stage the whole complex of qualities necessary for the performance of this complex part: the absolute disclosure of the possibilities and nuances of the sound of the voice, which allows to freely move between recitative episodes and full oases of sound, a phenomenal acting that provides self-sufficiency, physical and emotional endurance, which for the whole performance does not leave any musically or psychologically non-lived, “empty” second.”