For anyone who has been dumped over the telephone, Francis Poulenc’s 45 minute monologue, La Voix Humaine, might be uncomfortable listening. Set in 1950s France, it’s the final call of a distraught woman to her lover. He is marrying someone more socially suitable, leaving her alone and suicidal long before the invention of cookie dough ice cream.

A one-act opera based on the 1932 play by Jean Cocteau, it makes for harrowing listening: there are breaks in the line — a wry reference to Paris’s notoriously unreliable phone service — lingering pauses and revelations of deception before the woman lets slip that she has already tried to kill herself and might do it again: “If you did not love me and were not so awkward, this telephone could easily become a terrible weapon. A weapon that would leave no marks, nor make a noise . . .”

“It’s a gruelling piece to perform but interesting in the possibilities of saying one thing and meaning the other, something that’s very easy to do on the phone,” says Dame Felicity Lott, who performs La Voix with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra later this week. “It’s only you and you have to lift the story and really believe in it. You become tremendously involved with her and her story.”

She sighs: “One wonders why you do it really.”

But Lott is fascinated with the piece and has performed it several times, committing it to record last year with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande. She is currently in Paris brushing up on her French in time for Saturday’s concert. She concedes, however, that it’s one of the most difficult works in her repertoire and one that often leaves her in tears by the final scene.

“It’s very draining and it takes a lot of reworking every time I do it because nobody ever gives you a prompt,” she says. “Normally if you’re doing an opera somebody else says something which sets you off on a different tack. But here, in your head you have to have both sides of the conversation.”

The conductor assumes the role of the lover — it’s the conductor’s role to judge the pauses to perfection so that the orchestra comes in at just the right moment. Too long a gap and the tension drops, too short and it lacks sufficient emotional power. Sung in French, the demands are increased for non-French sopranos and Lott is widely considered to be one of the few who can carry it off.

“I think it works better in concert because it’s very concentrated,” says Lott. “I’ll bring my telephone and hopefully there will be the possibility of a chair.”

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