Poulenc’s 50-minute monodrama is sometimes referred to as a “single-voiced dialogue;” indeed, its structure–a woman is on the phone with her lover and he is breaking up with her, most unusual for theatre, let alone opera–implies another character and we, the audience get to know him through her reactions to what he tells her. She pleads, cajoles, picks fights, and reaches such desparation that we, too, become part of the voyeristic drama; we become the James Stewart character in Hitchcock’s Rear Window. The collaboration between Poulenc and Jean Cocteau, who wrote the libretto (it is included here, but only in French) is a wonder of character study in both music and words, and as performed here, by the cult-followed Jane Rhodes, it can’t fail to move. She misses none of the mood swings, her tone is rich and full, her expression so vivid that the French language becomes universal and we always know how she feels. The performance by the orchestra is likewise first-rate. This is a special piece, if perhaps for special tastes, and if you want stereo (Denise Duval’s premiere recording being mono, and also perhaps impossible to find outside of EMI’s complete Poulenc Edition), this is the recording to have.
