La voix humaine

La voix humaine is one of Jean Cocteau’s best-known and longest-lived works, and is fully entitled to be included in the canon of the European Theater, above all by virtue of its expansive force: the text has shown since its first performance an uninterrupted ability to provide insights of rereading, reworking and quotation that show no signs of diminishing. The text, its symbolism, the meaning it conveys – direct but very profound – have made La voix humaine an icon of our time. Upon its appearance, in 1930, La voix humaine was a revolutionary work, both for its structure (a dialogue-monologue), and for the centrality that the means of communication, and therefore technology, play in the narrative. Cocteau’s text continues to speak to us even today, transforming and influencing different sources: from opera, to pop music, to rock, to cinema.