Half Six Fix: La voix humaine

A different way to experience the LSO, with a burst of music to kick-start your evening: one piece, with introductions from the conductor about what makes the music so great, then we play straight through. If you want to delve deeper, there’ll be digital programme notes to view on your phone while we play.

In this Half Six Fix: Barbara Hannigan conducts, presents and sings Poulenc’s one-woman opera La voix humaine: a heart, a soul and a whole human life, in one devastating telephone call. Hannigan does all this with the added element of live video on the big screen, expect no compromises: just uncompromising emotion, and souls stripped bare.

‘Just a look could change everything … but with this telephone between us, what’s done is done. Don’t worry – no-one ever tries to kill themselves twice’. Alone in her bedroom, a young woman makes a call. We don’t know who she’s calling, or the story that has brought her to stake everything on a single shaky connection – but as the one-sided conversation unfolds, we find ourselves living every tear, every memory and every bitter, desperate hope.

La voix humaine turns a monologue by Jean Cocteau into a drama that burns itself into your memory. Who better to take the central role than Barbara Hannigan, a performer who charges everything she performs with the immediacy and honesty of life itself?

'Barbara Hannigan is simply extraordinary in the Poulenc. A true tragédienne, she switches from tenderness to violence to distraction in an instant. Her high notes are heartbreaking, her pronunciation is flawless; her timbre shades from bell-clear to dark and warm'. (Bachtrack)

'The London Symphony Orchestra’s regular Half Six Fix is a quick shot rather than the full classical cocktail: one hour; one symphony; no messing around.' (inews)