“…this is a lovestory (?)”

 

After a triumphant run of Bluebeard’s Castle (★★★★★ British Theatre), environmentally-sustainable opera company, Green Opera returns with a double-bill of operas exploring women’s identity in a modern world- Jake Heggie’s At the Statue of Venus (UK staged premiere) and Poulenc’s La voix humaine

La Voix Humaine by Francis Poulenc

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…

Based on Jean Coucteau’s play by the same name, Poulenc’s powerful one-woman opera La Voix Humaine tells of the importance of human connection and the universal fear of being alone.

 

At the Statue of Venus by Jake Heggie, Libretto by Terrence McNally

A woman waits by a statue of the Goddess of Love to meet a man she has never seen. Her thoughts and emotions are a jumble of hope, uncertainty and self-doubt. Will he like her? Will she like him? Why did she—a proudly successful woman – allow her friends to convince her that she needed a romantic partner to be fulfilled? Questions of female identity in the modern world are explored in Heggie’s comic and moving monodrama.

Content Warnings: references to suicide, pregnancy and distress.

SEATS FOR SEEDS: For every ticket sold, Green Opera plants a tree with Eden Reforestation Projects.