Barbara Hannigan conducts the New York Philharmonic performing R. Strauss Metamorphosen and Poulenc La Voix humaine at David Geffen Corridor / Picture by Chris Lee
I’d liked the movies floating round on-line for a decade. Barbara Hannigan makes an entrance in full costume to sing one in all her signature items, György Ligeti’s Mysteries of the Macabre—his live performance extracts, for coloratura soprano and chamber ensemble, from his opera, Le Grand Macabre—whereas conducting the ensemble herself, in character. An unimaginable stunt! Think about singing one of the vital outrageously tough items within the vocal repertoire and concurrently main the gamers by the advanced and tough rating!
However on Friday evening, I bought to see her prime that feat by main the New York Philharmonic by an much more formidable program: Richard Strauss’s Metamorphosen for 23 string soloists, adopted by an entire efficiency of Poulenc’s phone monodrama, La Voix humaine.
Does Hannigan have something to show? Certainly we already know, from her traversal as vocalist of scores by Alban Berg, George Benjamin, Hans Abrahamsen, and, sure, Ligeti, that she stands unmatched among the many opera world’s interpreters in her mixture of a deep mental and musical sophistication, her complete dramatic dedication, and the sheer vary, loveliness and agility of her vocal instrument. Her conducting repertoire spans the gamut from the 18th century to the day earlier than yesterday. And she will conduct and sing on the similar time? What’s subsequent? Is she going to stroll out onstage with a harmonica round her neck, a kick drum on her again, and cymbals between her knees, yodeling and taking part in a squeezebox?
Barbara Hannigan conducts the New York Philharmonic performing R. Strauss Metamorphosen and Poulenc La voix humaine at David Geffen Corridor, 4/23/2026. Picture by Chris Lee
However her selection of the Metamorphosen as a live performance opener appeared designed to show her vary as a musical interpreter. Strauss, after all, composed among the operatic stage’s best roles for Hannigan’s fach, however I don’t know whether or not she’s even sung Zerbinetta or Sophie in her skilled profession. And as a substitute of bringing a prima donna’s indulgence to Strauss’s decadent rating, she introduced an opera conductor’s effectivity, rigorously pacing and balancing the work so that every element got here to the fore, every dramatic twist within the concord conveyed clearly however not oversold.
Her interpretation was startling from the primary bar. The low string chorale the opens the work was carried out non vibrato, just like the cool, hushed sound of a viol consort, by no means just like the sound of an ensemble of midcentury Solostreicher. Right here and there, the gamers added a splash of vibrato to heat up an accented word, nevertheless it wasn’t till the violins entered that the ensemble allowed the straight tones to present technique to a constant vibrato sound.
Now, we all know that this couldn’t probably have been the sound that Strauss had in thoughts. We have now recordings from the composer’s personal lifetime, and shortly thereafter, by conductors who knew him intimately, and guess what? They don’t sound something like this. Hannigan’s model of the piece was totally her personal, drawing on interpretive beliefs shaped within the a long time after Strauss’s demise.
To which I say: Good. We don’t hear this music with the identical ears with which it was heard at its premiere 80 years in the past. These interpretive—let’s name them “applied sciences”—have hardly rendered the outdated ones out of date, however they’re worthwhile instruments for understanding, translating, and speaking even items similar to this one. Extra to the purpose, maybe, Hannigan’s refined artistry made a robust case for her revisionist studying, weaving the efficiency along with a nuanced sample and crystal-clear cues all through Strauss’s dense “research.”
Barbara Hannigan conducts the New York Philharmonic performing R. Strauss Metamorphosen and Poulenc La voix humaine at David Geffen Corridor, 4/23/2026. Picture by Chris Lee
The second, for much longer “half” of this system confirmed us a distinct Hannigan totally. (We even bought a dressing up change!) A film display above the stage, which had—to common applause—devoted the live performance to the reminiscence of Michael Tilson Thomas, now gave us, within the opening bars of La Voix humaine, the blurry monochrome picture of our conductor, shot head on by a remote-controlled digicam hidden within the orchestra, her all of the sudden naked arms white in opposition to the black of the darkish live performance corridor behind her. The digicam zoomed in, the singer-conductor got here into focus, and the drama started.
La Voix humaine relies on a monodrama by Jean Cocteau—maybe most acquainted today by Pedro Almodóvar’s movie adaptation, starring Tilda Swinton—and Almodóvar’s obsession with the work, which additionally performs a task in his earlier La Ley del deseo, speaks to most of the play’s compelling qualities. It’s conceptually gratifying, being a drama informed totally by way of one aspect of a phone dialog. It tells the story of a deeply sympathetic girl struggling in extremis due to the unseen, unheard man on the different finish of the road. It’s a dramatic tour de drive, which means that it makes a super star automobile for a mature and glamorous actor. And in its deeply earnest, simply barely over-the-top melodrama, it’s the highest of excessive camp.
The aesthetically minimal, but visually scrumptious dwell video projections designed by Clemens Malinowski positioned Hannigan between, I feel, 4 cameras, in order that we might see her from a number of angles in a type of digital multiple-exposure. Two conductors, at both aspect of the display, appeared to be reaching their arms in the direction of one another in symmetry, whereas within the heart, an excessive closeup of the soprano glowed like Dreyer’s Joan of Arc within the pale brilliance of a footlight behind her podium. When she cued the cellos, she additionally pointed at her viewers by what I’ll name Digital camera One; when she cued the violins, she gesticulated at us by Digital camera Two. It was brilliantly choreographed enterprise, somewhat ballet with cameras.
And what gesticulations! Her conducting sample, so tidy and easy within the Strauss, had turn into a dance of arms and fluttering fingers: she was beating in character. She was conveying the character’s emotional state not solely together with her voice, not solely together with her face—big on the silver display above her—and never solely together with her bodily angle, however in her conducting of Poulenc’s lush and mercurial accompaniment.
The need of singing together with her again to the viewers led this manufacturing to intersect with the textual content in a couple of sudden methods. The opera known as, in any case, La voix humaine, and we hear just one human voice, that of the principle character (referred to as merely Elle). However the title has a second which means: her battle to listen to the voice of the ex-lover on the opposite finish of the road, by unhealthy connections and crossed wires. In a standard manufacturing, she can be unamplified, current with us, her voice vibrating the identical air that we’re respiratory; she, tethered to the bodily and emotionally distant different by a phone line, finds herself reduce off from him by the identical expertise that has related them collectively.
However when Hannigan sings the function amplified by a discreet mic, the efficiency is conceptually altered: she, the singer, is now utilizing audio expertise to speak with us, the viewers. In a single stunning second, there was a rustle of noise, and I spotted to my horror that with a dramatic toss of her head, her mic had come unglued from her temple, slipped out from behind her ear, and had fallen all the way down to her neck. In a second of queasy dramatic irony, we had all seen it on the massive display, however Hannigan didn’t discover till it slipped down far sufficient that it stopped selecting up her (human) voice.
Don’t fear, she bought the mic again behind her ear with out lacking a beat or breaking character. And this unsettling second was of a bit with Malinowski’s video, which in two moments paused unexpectedly—however, apparently, on objective—with static quivering on the display, as if we have been watching a frozen, buffering Facetime name.
Barbara Hannigan conducts the New York Philharmonic performing R. Strauss Metamorphosen and Poulenc La voix humaine at David Geffen Corridor, 4/23/2026. Picture by Chris Lee
And the amplification, by sound designer Etienne Démoulin, was discreet sufficient that Hannigan’s personal extraordinary vocalism got here by loud and clear throughout her vary. She gave excessive, good hysterics up within the ledger traces, guttural despair down low, and a candy, pure tone in her lyric register when she tried to placed on a courageous entrance. And her conducting by no means bought in the way in which of her vocal manufacturing, by no means distracted from her singing.
If something, the alternative was the case: I used to be too mesmerized by her efficiency to pay a lot consideration to what the orchestra was doing, which is the signal of each an excellent vocalist and of a proficient opera conductor. What I observed most of all have been the moments when her voice rang out, unaccompanied, over Poulenc’s sudden silences within the orchestral rating, and he or she might enable her arms to drop to her aspect, her face to show away from the gamers, and sing on to us. I had by no means observed simply what number of of those grand pauses there have been within the rating.
In different phrases, this wasn’t only a stunt. Barbara Hannigan’s strategy to La voix humaine, in addition to to Metamorphosen, might have been shockingly new and bold, however they represented—and supplied to the viewers—a deeper understanding of those items. Her efficiency, because the Philharmonic’s, was greater than dazzling: it was insightful, it was emotionally wrenching, and it was deeply, richly pleasurable to the ear and eye.
