Cedar Rapids Opera offers a production with a unique view of the city on May 13

For several productions, Cedar Rapids Opera has explored new venues.

This production of Francis Poulenc’s one-act opera, "La voix humaine (The Human Voice)," is being staged at the dynamic fourth-floor indoor-outdoor porch of the downtown Cedar Rapids CRST building. This follows Cedar Rapids Opera’s productions of pieces at non-theatric venues like the Hotel Vetro lobby (Cox and Box), Prairie Table (Bon Appetit), and the Kirkwood College teaching kitchen (Bon Appetit). "La voix humaine" will be produced one night only, May 13.

The venue, being a covered open porch area, will be an unusual place for this dramatic one-woman opera. It is a COVID-safe venue because it is totally open to the streets and river below. It is essentially an inset terrace that wraps around three sides of the building, affording vistas of the river at one end, and the downtown on the other. This building was designed by OPN Architects and completed in 2016.

In a way, this modern venue reflects the opera itself. While the opera’s story is a familiar one, the music is distinctly Poulenc, and therefore French — and 20th century. Poulenc’s tender and specific setting of the French language reminds us that for all composers, the text comes first, inspiring the music. This opera is based on Jean Cocteau’s play of the same name from 1930.

It is interesting that the telephone takes on a role of its own. Being a new device in the early 20th century, Cocteau takes advantage of this novel communicating device, making it almost one of the characters in the piece.

In the roughly 50 minutes of the opera, the only character in the opera, Elle, is on the telephone for the entire opera. She is speaking to a lover, one that is breaking up with her. And at the end, the insinuation is that the cord of the telephone itself is used in Elle’s final action of the opera, and her own life.

Janara Kellerman will sing the role of Elle. For CRO, she has sung Mamma Lucia in "Cavalleria rusticana," Carmen in "Carmen," and Amneris in "Aida."

Kellerman comments on the character, Elle: “The tragedy I see for Elle is that before entering the relationship with her lover, she was clearly a strong, passionate, independent woman. Through the course of their five-year relationship, she became so totally engulfed and entwined in her life with him that she literally says 'he is the air she breathes.' This is the tragedy of many women who lose themselves in their relationships and then when it ends, they feel as though they have nothing, no purpose, nothing to live for.”

Haley Stamats is the stage director. Stamats made her directorial debut with CRO in "The Grant Wood Operas: Strokes of Genius" and for the past two years has worked as an assistant stage director for Arizona Opera and Virginia Opera.

Gail Williams will be the music director and pianist. Williams will just have completed accompanying for CRO’s Artist in Residence at Washington High School, Dorian McCall.

For tickets, go to the CRO website and you’ll be taken to ticketing: https://www.cropera.org/la-voix-humaine.

The performance begins at 7:30 p.m.

Daniel Kleinknecht is founder and artistic director of Cedar Rapids Opera Theatre.

This article originally appeared on Iowa City Press-Citizen: Cedar Rapids Opera offers a production with a unique view of the city