Photo Flash: First Look at San Francisco Opera Lab's ANNA CATERINA

SF Opera Lab presents three performances of Francis Poulenc's 1958 monodrama La Voix humaine (The Human Voice) starring internationally acclaimed soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci with pianist Donald Sulzen on March 11, 14 and 17, 2017. In these rare appearances outside of Europe, Antonacci will perform "Elle," the distraught character at the heart of the opera and one of the soprano's most celebrated portrayals, along with a program of French art songs in the intimate, 299-seat Dianne and Tad Taube Atrium Theater at the Diane B. Wilsey Center for Opera.

Check out a first look below!

Based on Jean Cocteau's play about a woman's desperate, final phone conversation with a soon-to-be ex-lover,Poulenc's score complements the rhapsodic narrative with musical tension. A vocal and dramatic tour-de-force, La Voix humaine requires a virtuoso performer and Antonacci has emerged as one of the work's leading interpreters today. After a recent performance at New York's Alice Tully Hall, The New York Times observed, "Ms. Antonacci's remarkable talent is a suspension between artifice and naturalness, theatricality and subtlety. She may be putting on an act, but she's also telling the truth."