Recently appointed associate artist with the London Symphony Orchestra, soprano-conductor Barbara Hannigan has made much of her dual role, often singing and conducting simultaneously, with uneven results, both live and on disc. Her latest venture, first unveiled in Paris in January last year, juxtaposes Strauss’s Metamorphosen with a multimedia version of La Voix Humaine, Poulenc’s one-act opera depicting the final phone conversation between a desperate woman, Elle (“She”), and the unseen lover who is dumping her for someone else.
Her take on the work is idiosyncratic. At several points, Elle admits to lying, and Hannigan, in a video talk before her performance, posits the idea that the opera itself is a lie, arguing that Elle’s lover doesn’t really exist, and that “all this is a fantasy in her mind”. She notes Elle’s need to control her world, much as she herself controls the orchestra. “Perhaps she imagines that she is me,” she tells us.
