Trouble in Tahiti - Leonard Bernstein
La voix humaine - Francis Poulenc
Buxton Festival Opera, 2025
Iwan Davies, Daisy Evans, Charles Rice, Hanna Hipp, Chloé Hare-Jones, Harun Tekin, Ross Cumming, Allison Cook
Buxton Opera House, 23rd July 2025
There have been double bills of short operas at the Buxton Festival in the past that have adventurously even managed to connect two different works that appear to have very little in common. I reviewed The Maiden in the Tower & Kashchei the Immortal by Sibelius and Rimsky-Korsakov in 2012 and La Princesse Jaune and La Colombe by Saint-Saëns and Gounod in 2013, but I don't think there has been one since then. This double bill for the 2025 Buxton International Festival is a hard sell however; two works with a very bleak outlook on relationships which, for all their differences, are actually complementary on some level. It still takes a little creativity to link Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti with Poulenc's La voix humaine, but in the Buxton tradition Daisy Evans managed to do that quite successfully, even if that meant doubling up the misery.
As bleak as the outlook is in each of these works individually, their strength is that they are very good at what they do. What they do is present a miniature opera with a concentrated intensity that suits material that would probably be less effective (and unendurable) if they were drawn out any longer. Their very concision make them special, allowing a singular mood to be explored, offering a rare intensity that would feel out of place in a longer work (although Ambroise Thomas has a go at rivalling such emotions with his long soliloquies and a mad scene that lasted a whole Act in Hamlet at the Buxton Festival on the previous evening). Whether the two works gain or not from being connected - or whether they even should be brought together - is debatable, but as far as the Buxton production went it did intensify the works without overburdening their inherent simplicity.
Trouble in Tahiti is a challenge in itself, almost setting itself up to be deeply unlikeable in a way that is hard to define. Bernstein's treads a tricky line between parody and satire, between seducing the audience with catchy show tunes that celebrate the ideal of the typical suburban American married couple (of the 1950s) by setting it to sunny music, with a cheesy chorus, radio jingles and musical numbers while at the same time throwing in some dissonance that hints that there is a dark and corrupting side to the American dream that lies beneath the surface. The libretto throws out some cliched lines, undoubtedly sold by idealistic musicals like the film 'Trouble in Tahiti' that Dinah goes to see, but yet they also reveal truths about the circumstances of a married couple at a standstill in their relationship and about to grow more distant.
There is a lot to 'unpack' in the contrasts of the sunny music and the reality of the disintegration of a relationship, so what you probably don't need in a production of Trouble in Tahiti is anything that just makes it even more 'troubling'. Or maybe you do, because while the opera hints at Sam being a bit on the fresh side with his secretary - something he doesn't even consider as cheating, but just a part of conforming to the natural law of being a man - Daisy Evans' production went further to show evidence of Sam's philandering. She does this quite cleverly (and maliciously) by tying Bernstein's work into Poulenc's La voix humaine.
The presence of Allison Cook behind a lace curtain in a warmly lit room off to one side of stage was an early clue to what was to come in the second part of the double bill, the little box room practically an ideal of a typical set for Poulenc's La voix humaine, a room designed to feel perfectly claustrophobic for a woman waiting on a phone call from her lover, feeling trapped and caged with no way out of her predicament. What you might not have expected however was Sam to wander into the room while he is supposed to be out at the gym and start undressing the lady in the room. It's there that Sam goes to deliver his master of the universe soliloquy, boasting of his masculine superiority, winning another kind of 'trophy'. Is the lady of La voix humaine his secretary, Mrs Brown? She's going to be let down by the time we get to the second part of the double bill. Things really aren't going to get any more cheerful.
"That was the most depressing opera I've ever seen", a lady exclaimed at the interval in the bar of the upper circle at the Buxton Opera House. "Wait until you see the next one", I warned. I didn't of course spoil it for the lady by telling her that La voix humaine is about a woman unravelling at the breakup of a relationship who attempts - and maybe even succeeds - in committing suicide while on the phone to her ex-lover. Perhaps I should have said something, as I'm sure she went home traumatised after Allison Cook's performance as the lady left hanging on the telephone.
Given this insight into the other side of the phone line serves to take in the wider context of what we are witnessing. We see Sam making silent gestures, trying to be placatory and being somewhat insensitive to what he probably sees as emotional blackmail, while it's clear that it really amounts to a call for help to simply hear a sympathetic human voice. That isn't found either when Dinah, tired of these mysterious calls to her husband, picks up the phone and is devastated by what she hears. Not for the woman's sake, of course, but for her own marriage and for which she will probably forgive her husband in the end.
La voix humaine doesn't need this. It's debatable whether it helps in any way to visualise the person on the other end of the line, and take such a determined stand on what their nature might be. We already get hints of that from the one-sided conversation, so it doesn't need to be spelled out. There is something to be said for just letting us see the woman, 'Elle', and Allison Cook did not need any additional props or bodies (the chorus from Tahiti also make mournful appearances) to get across the state of mind of her character. But the touches and the connections were subtle and unobtrusive, and it seemed that rather than opening up the claustrophobic drama, it may indeed have made it feel even more traumatic.
There was perhaps a greater challenge for Iwan Davies and the Buxton Festival Orchestra to marry together the two completely different styles of music for the two short operas, but they presented both superbly. As with the outstanding Hamlet the previous evening, the key to really making all these pieces work is in the singing. Perhaps even more so here since there is a lot of intense solo singing, although Hamlet had that too. Charles Rice as Sam and Hanna Hipp as Dinah were both tremendous, engaging you in their own personal worlds and making you feel the depth of their troubles in their clashes. Allison Cook, much like her Gertrude the previous night, also had a rather extended physical meltdown in this production of La voix humaine as 'Elle', and carried you along, all too emotionally involved in the torment she was going through.
Whoever was responsible for pairing these two operas together - I imagine it was the Festival Opera director Adrian Kelly - really challenged the audience and put you through the wringer. You weren't going to see many smiling faces when you left the opera house, but it would be hard not to be impressed with the unique qualities of these works, the performances and the creative artistry in making two short operas that never sound all that appealing in synopsis come fully alive and show deep insights into their human characters.
External links: Buxton International Festival
