Francis Poulenc - Les mamelles de Tirésias [With score]

-Composer: Francis Jean Marcel Poulenc (7 January 1899 - 30 January 1963)
-Librettist: Guillaume Apollinaire
-Orchestra, Choir: Orchestre et Chœur du Théatre National de l’Opéra Comique
-Conductor: André Cluytens
-Performers: Denise Duval (Thérèse), Jean Giraudeau (The Husband), Emile Rousseau (The Gendarme), Gilbert Jullia (A Bearded Gentleman), Frédéric Leprin (Lacouf), Julien Thirache (Presto), Serge Rallier (The Journalist), Robert Jeantet (The Manager), Marguerite Legouhy (The Newspaper Vender, A Fat Lady), Jacques Hivert (The Son)
00:00 - Prologue
Act I
06:43 - Scène 1
11:36 - Scène 2
13:25 - Scène 3
13:53 - Scène 4
15:42 - Scène 5
19:33 - Scène 6
23:43 - Scène 7
26:46 - Scène 8
30:11 - Entr'acte
Act II
32:56 - Scène 1
34:09 - Scène 2
38:23 - Scène 3
39:57 - Scène 4
42:16 - Scène 5
42:58 - Scène 6
43:31 - Scène 7
49:02 - Scène 8
Poulenc wrote four operas and they fall into three distinct categories. His grand opera is "Les Dialogues des Carmelites". The work is serious in demeanor, with little of the humor that characterizes much of Poulenc's output. In subject matter, and in much of the writing, the work resembles Poulenc's numerous religious works. "La Voix Humaine" is a monologue for a soprano who is, on the phone, begging her lover not to leave her. It is an revealing look at intimate thoughts and personal despair. The second of these monologues was "La Dame de Monte Carlo". And then there is "Les Mamelles de Tiresias". Witty, zany, rambunctious, ridiculous, and outrageous are appropriate terms for this Opera-bouffe in two acts and a prologue. However there is also a touch of seriousness in the opera. Poulenc stated; "Whenever in the midst of the worst buffoonery a phrase can effect a change in the lyric tone, towards a certain melancholy, I have not hesitated thus to alter the character of the music, well knowing what sadness was hidden behind Apollinaire's smile". Completed in 1947, the work was originally paired, in performance, with Puccini's "La Boheme" or Bizet's "Les Pecheurs des Perles". It is not surprising that it did not please lovers of those two examples of extreme lyricism. The original play was set in 1903 in Zanzibar. Poulenc updated the story to 1917, and changed the location to somewhere between Nice and Monte Carlo. The settings were by Erte. The story comprises a number of sketches that somehow make enough sense to push the opera along. The title character is a feminist, who, by making her breasts fly away, turns her husband, with the help of an incubator, into a baby factory, with an output of thousands of children a day. Around this central theme is interwoven other odd plot devices like the simultaneous dueling deaths of Lacouf and Presto, and the creation of sons, one of whom hoards skim milk, another a journalist turned blackmailer. Poulenc's music contains many amusing devices, including the then popular, now forgotten dance, the Boston. The vocal writing is wordy but still trips lightly. The often conflicting influences of Emmanuel Chabrier, Erik Satie, Igor Stravinsky, Jules Massenet, Darius Milhaud, and especially Jacques Offenbach scamper through the piece. It is just this cross fertilization of styles that makes Poulenc so captivating, for he was as capable of sentimentality as hi-jinx. The orchestration, utilizing the same orchestra as Carmen, is clever without being cute, and Poulenc said: "The truth is that I believe much more in the novelty of mind than of matter". Occasional revivals of this work prove its viability as a theater piece, although the first recording, with many of the originators of the parts, especially Denise Duval and Jean Giraudeau, is as close to a perfect realization of the characters as one is likely to get.
[allmusic.com]

[@nicgayle9188]

Perhaps the loveliest, most enchanting and teasing operatic confection that the 20th century ever produced.. To hear it is to love it-and love it for ever.

[@OctopusContrapunctus]

I just love poulenc so much

[@Nooticus]

same :;)

[@Twentythousandlps]

Denise Duval sang the lead in the premiere, and then the lead in the French premiere of Dialogues, and then the lead in La Voix Humane. Poulenc liked her!

[@treesny]

Not only does this classic recording preserve the performance of the inimitable Denise Duval (and the superb conducting of Cluytens) but of the original orchestration (1946). In 1962, for a production in Milan, Poulenc reduced the brass and wind sections by four instruments: 1 bassoon (of 3), 2 horns (of 4) and 1 trumpet (of 3), and this is the only version now available. Poulenc, who specified the size of the string sections precisely, gave the total number of players in the revised version as 50. You can hear the difference most clearly whenever the brass weighs in at full force. Poulenc also made several revisions to DIALOGUES DES CARMELITES following the premiere at La Scala, including a few cuts and most significantly adding or extending interludes between the scenes, to cover scene changes (as Debussy had in PELLEAS ET MELISANDE and Britten in PETER GRIMES).

[@DavidA-ps1qr]

I'd like to hear this translated into English as I've no idea what's going on. The music is typical Poulenc, like eating a rich chocolate cake. Delicious.

[@OctopusContrapunctus]

It's a pretty fun story.
I will share a small good summary I foun:
Thérèse is a bored housewife, fed up with her tedious husband and more interested in being a soldier. As she dreams of how life would be if she were a man, her breasts (in the form of balloons) float up into the air and explode, as she starts to grow a beard. Her husband arrives, and is bluntly told that Tirésias is no longer his wife.
Two cheerful drunks come out of the café discussing a gambling incident, as a result of which they fight a duel and shoot one another. The mourning is led by Thérèse in male attire. Her husband, now dressed as a female, is amused to find that in this guise he becomes attractive to the local gendarme. He volunteers to provide the children that the women of the town seem reluctant to produce. The first act ends in general confusion - even the two drunks, no longer dead, are able to join in.
The stage is filled with prams, and the husband celebrates his amazing fertility, giving birth to numerous progeny (40,000 in a day). Feeding them is a problem, and a journalist is suspicious, but one of the children is already a best-selling author. The husband is also issued with ration cards by a fortune-teller who is Thérèse/Tirésias in disguise. When this lady is attacked by the gendarme, she kills him, and the couple seem to get together again, exhorting the French people to make love, not war.

[@OctopusContrapunctus]

And secondly, you can actually read the translation on the score

[@DavidA-ps1qr]

@@OctopusContrapunctus Thank you very much.