Soprano Paula Sides and pianist Sergey Rybin have teamed up for this vibrant new recording of works by the French 20th-century composer Francis Poulenc.

The centrepiece of the album is Poulenc's short solo opera La Voix humaine ("The Human Voice"), based on the play of the same name by his friend Jean Cocteau. The one-act piece involves a solo singer in a single room with a telephone. The anonymous individual has been abandoned by her lover and reveals that she has attempted to commit suicide. The drama consists of her last conversation with her lover - an intense and sometimes disturbing monologue.

Accompanying La Voix humaine on the album is Poulenc's song cycle Fiançailles pour rire ("Betrothals for Laughs"), his 1939 setting of six poems from the collection of the same name by Louise de Vilmorin.