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Pelléas et Mélisande

What the critics say

Roberto Herrscher for Opera News, May 2002

http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/_archive/502/InReview.502.html

Veteran Swiss conductor Armin Jordan was the main force behind the success of this production of Debussy's only opera. He guided his troops with the ease and intelligence that transforms difficult works such as Pelléas et Mélisande into clear statements and forceful, forward-moving stories. His was one of those musical performances during which the listener feels that it is the only possible way of interpreting this music.

Debussy's musical drama has been described as the absolute opposite of Wagner's method in Tristan und Isolde. Indeed, the two composers' approaches to similar subjects (a tragic love that knows no barriers between two characters whose relationship is forbidden by every human law) couldn't differ more. While Tristan and Isolde embrace their passion to the limit of expression and burn themselves in the fire of their own singing, Pelléas and Mélisande succumb to their irrepressible attraction with shyness and resignation. There's nothing to do but let the tragedy unfold, so, as Joseph Kerman writes in Opera as Drama, the main theme of this non-drama is the "purposelessness of action." The only movement exists in the atmospheres Debussy created through his impressionistic use of the orchestra, and Jordan made the Orquesta Sinfónica de Madrid play at their highest level, weaving a dreamlike musical tapestry of striking persuasive power.

Directors Patrice Caurier and Moshe Leiser and set designer Christian Fenouillat, working on the same wavelength as the conductor, created a surprising and effective setting in which the key element was water. The unhappy lovers dove, swam and rowed in a pond that filled the stage. Upstage stood a pier and a weedy area, the setting for scenes where tradition and constraint reigned supreme. The water became the perfect match with Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolic drama: it symbolized all that is real, true, deep, intense - feelings on which Debussy drew in his battle against the conventions of opera. Into these waters jumped a strong, committed cast, with abundant chemistry.

María Bayo was a luminous Mélisande. A natural Zerlina, Susanna and Despina, she worked extremely hard to portray an adorably mysterious, moonstruck girl. With a wig, her hair could be made to seem longer - that was easy -- but her arms, legs and fingers also seemed longer. Her pure, lyrical soprano sounded otherworldly, making her suffering and death seem as real and immediate as those of Violetta and Mimì.

Simon Keenlyside created a complex character: a Hamlet thrust in the world of Tristan. His hopelessness and melancholy looked so elegant, that Mélisande's fall appeared inevitable. Keenlyside's light yet grainy baritone sounded just right in this role.

As the tortured Golaud, Jean-Philippe Lafont (the only native French speaker in the international cast) distilled and projected all the danger and violence of the character, even before the tragedy started to unfold. He has a powerful, virile bass-baritone, and his magnetic concentration makes it seem he's center-stage even when he's not.

Fabiola Masino (Yniold), Franz-Josef Selig (Arkel), Brigitta Svendén (Geneviève) and Juan Tomás Martínez (the doctor) all commanded the Debussy recitative with biting precision, contributing to a night when everything seemed to work just right.

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