La voix humaine & Metamorfoser

The concert opens with Richard Strauss' Metamorfoser, where 23 individual string instruments are given their own voices. This 1945 work is a memorial to human culture destroyed by war.

Following that is Poulenc's opera La voix humaine - a work about being finally abandoned. Symfonikerna's first guest conductor Barbara Hannigan sings, conducts and plays the lead role simultaneously, with live cameras as part of the stage language. She moves between conductor, singer and actor in real time, without fixed boundaries between them.

"Here Hannigan transforms into a bird, gymnast, dancer and boxer - while the conducting is organically woven into the choreography... an incomparable performance." - Dagens Nyheter

"I find myself asking whether there even is an ex-lover? What and who actually exists within these deep and true feelings of love, loss and loneliness?" - Barbara Hannigan

The same production guest performs at Oslo Opera on 7 March.