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Midsummer Opera presents an unusual and fascinating coupling. In Leoncavallo's verismo masterpiece Pagliacci (?Clowns?) a jealous husband's murderous passion plays out under comical cover of a commedia dell'arte. Soloists John Upperton, Nicola Ihnatowicz and Nick Marsden play the three protagonists. Before Pagliacci, Poulenc's one-woman opera La voix humaine, adapted from a Cocteau play. The jilted ?Elle? waits despairingly by the phone for her ex-lover to call. Poulenc wrote it for soprano Denise Duval who had just premièred the role of Blanche in his Dialogues des Carmélites. And in an echo of that, Sophie Boyer, our own Blanche in 2019, will come back to London from France to sing Elle. The full Symphony Orchestra and Chorus of Midsummer Opera are conducted by David Roblou.

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