Francis Poulenc

As part of the fascination in post World War II France with American culture, a young French couple here travel to the US to see for themselves the prosperity they have heard about.

Having lost his memory due to serving in World War I, Gaston has spent the past 15 years in a psychiatric hospital. Due to his large disability pension fund, several families claim him as their missing son. Gaston is introduced to the Renaud family by the Duchess Dupont-Dufort and her lawyer. The Renaud family attempt to revive Gaston's memory with stories of his past, but he is apalled by some of the things he hears and dislikes the man he is supposed to be.

Cattion d'Urville takes in a gypsy, Sarah, and her granddaughter Miarka, in an outbuilding of her chateau. Miarka, while growing up, attracts the attention of Luigi, Cattion's nephew who, little by little, falls in love with her. Sarah raised her daughter in the tradition of gypsies who curse anyone who marries a man who is not a gypsy. Miarka ends up loving Luigi and he wants to marry her. The law of race opposes it. Fortunately, a well-conducted genealogical investigation will discover that Luigi is of the gypsy race. They will marry.

Slovenian conductor Martina Batič and the Radio France Choir offers an eclectic programme combining Wagner, Debussy, Fauré and Poulenc. The choir is accompanied by eight cellists from the Orchestre Philharmonique de Radio de France.

Edwige Feuillère and Pierre Richard-Willm star in director Jacques de Baroncelli's adaptation of the Balzac novella The Duchesse de Langeais, which tells the tale of a Parisian socialite who is romantically pursued by a Napoleonic war hero. With a screenplay by Jean Giraudoux.

The Maîtrise de Radio takes us on a journey through three hundred years of choral music. From Bach to Jean-Benoît Dunkel, including a world premiere by Fabien Waksman, this richly varied concert is punctuated by the dance-infused collaboration of the Théâtre de Chaillot

The Orchestra of the Royal Opera House presents a new production of Poulenc's short opera La Voix Humaine, featuring soprano Danielle de Niese and shot on location in Paris and London.

The Philharmonie de Paris celebrates its tenth anniversary and invites Klaus Mäkelä and Gustavo Dudamel to perform a concert of changing colours, from modernism to impressionism, with works by Boulez, Beethoven, Poulenc, Moussorgski and Ravel.

The young hero seems the essence of maleness, yet he's troubled by vaguely feminine objects. Soon his masculine and feminine selves are intercut, as each of his identities appears to look and gesture at the other. The film, at once melancholy and transcendent, consists of a shimmering, nearly plotless evocation of gender identity in flux through haunting, densely interlaced images.

The first ever performances in Munich, this production was entrusted to Dmitri Tcherniakov, whose worldwide reputation is underpinned by productions like Eugene Onegin and Macbeth at the Paris Opera and Don Giovanni at Aix-en- Provence. The superb international cast includes a fine Blanche de la Force in Susan Gritton and an excellent Madame de Croissy by Sylvie Brunet, who was favourably compared to Rita Gorr in the press.

Yannick Nézet-Séguin leads the classic John Dexter production of Poulenc’s devastating story of faith and martyrdom. Mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard sings the touching role of Blanche and soprano Karita Mattila, a legend in her own time, returns to the Met as the Prioress.

From Milan's Teatro alla Scala, the traditional Christmas Concert. The program includes Francis Poulenc's “Les Animaux modèles” suite for orchestra and Charles Gounod's “Messe solennelle de Sainte-Cécile” for soloists, choir, orchestra, and obbligato organ.

Running through Bartók’s disenchanted tale, whose haunting music was initially condemned as unplayable, and the expression of despair in Poulenc’s monologue, the director Krzysztof Warlikowski perceives a shared dramatic thread, a shared feminine consciousness and a shared sense of imprisonment and suffocation: for the woman who penetrates the confines of Bluebeard’s castle and Elle, the woman who clings to a telephone conversation with a man as the only thing worth living for, are condemned to share the same fate. And this man she speaks to, does he really exist? Unless the director has interpreted Cocteau’s words to the letter and the telephone has become a “terrifying weapon that leaves no trace, makes no noise”…

An elegant young woman in her messy room answers the phone call from her lover. This one, who intends to leave her, tries to make her understand what he is up to without hurting her too much, hypersensitive as she is. All means are good: big words, cajolery, denial, lies. As for the woman, who senses that this is the end, she desperately tries to win him back, passing from tenderness to passion, from the threat of attempted suicide to calm, from regret to outbursts of violence.

On the banks of the Seine and in the metro, Édith Stockhausen performs a poem by Jean Cocteau.

Dialogues of the Carmelites. Opera in three acts and twelve scenes by Francis Poulenc, based on the play by Georges Bernanos. Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma conducted by Michele Mariotti, directed by Emma Dante.

The two parts of the evening showcase two opposite extremes of emotion. Firstly, Poulenc’s powerful La voix humaine (The Human Voice) tells the touching story of an abandoned woman. The opera monologue of approximately 45 minutes is performed in melodramatic film noir style. After the interval the atmosphere changes dramatically, turning into a raucous show of musical classics and popular repertoire. Directed by Jussi Nikkilä and conducted by Dalia Stasevska, this event has been put together specifically to showcase the great artistry of Karita Mattila.

The Human Voice is a contemporary adaptation of the 1928 stage play by Jean Cocteau, and "La Voix Humaine," the 1958 chamber opera by Francis Poulenc. In a radically new production The Human Voice presents a flip of gender, and a metaphor of global pandemic. Now in English, Isaiah Bell sings to his male lover, and into the abyss of COVID. In a Zoom call impaired by lag and freeze and dropped signals, technology is once again enemy to intimacy. The agony of failed love is heightened by the necessity of distance, by the anaesthetic of the machine.

Performed at the Théâtre Graslin in Nantes in 2013. Francis Poulenc (1899-1963): Dialogues des Carmélites, opera in 3 acts and 12 scenes from a libretto by Emmet Lavery.

A man's bathroom routine triggers a miraculous vision in a nearby church.