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Pelléas et Mélisande

What the critics say

Stephen Mudge for Opera News December  2004 , vol 69 , no.5

http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/review/review.aspx?id=517&issueID=42&archive=true

Conductor Sylvain Cambreling, who is one of the key players in the shared musical direction of the Opéra this season, defended the decision to move the production to the Bastille. He rightly claimed that the width of the modern house’s stage better suited Wilson’s visual conception. He also suggested that the new house did better justice to Debussy’s orchestra, as the composer was dissatisfied with the circumstances of the premiere at the Opéra Comique. This is more dubious scholarship and hardly relevant in terms of a choice between Garnier and Bastille. However, all doubts were put aside at the triumphant Bastille premiere. The orchestral playing under the French maestro glowed with romantic ardor in what was perhaps a more Expressionist reading than some classic versions but emerged as an intensely theatrical reading of the score. With the level of the pit raised to a maximum, questions of balance occasionally arose, as the orchestra played an upfront role in the drama rather than remaining a background tapestry of sound.

Wilson’s staging is more appropriate for this work than for some of his more recent opera productions. The isolation of the characters in this Symbolist drama suit the producer’s abstract acting style, and the wrenching lack of physical contact only serves to add an extra layer of tension to this troubled tale of dark castle adultery. The stage images include some of Wilson’s most elegant uncluttered lines, with Mélisande’s ring used as an important metaphorical element. The effective blocking was seconded by expressive lighting, which included a piercing green filter when the monster of jealousy first enters the mind of Golaud, sung on this occasion by veteran José van Dam. His was a predictably great performance, with a perfect sense of the composer’s prosody and an overwhelming vocal climax, making Golaud a wounded bear of a man obsessed by his wife’s potential infidelity. Mireille Delunsch as Mélisande sang with great intelligence and crystalline diction in a notable appearance from the Violetta of last summer’s Aix Traviata. Her Pelléas, English baritone Simon Keenlyside, was equal to his French colleagues in terms of clarity of projection and managed the high-lying phrases of the role with bright, searing tone in a performance of heart-stopping intensity, even if casting such a dramatic baritone in the role robs the character of some of its vulnerability and innocence. Dagmar Pecková’s stern Eastern-European Geneviève cut a fine silhouette, and Ferruccio Furlanetto’s cavernous bass made a rare and welcome excursion outside his usual Italian repertoire, providing a moving, gloriously sung Arkel. The cast was completed by David Bizic as a melodious shepherd and Frédéric Caton as a warmly human doctor, in an evening that reaffirmed the genius of this twentieth-century masterpiece.
 

Hard to Know What to Make of Them:

Robert Wilson's Abstract Pelléas at the Paris Opéra

By David Stevens for The International Herald Tribune, 22 September 2004

Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande began its life a little more than a century ago at the Opéra-Comique, but since 1977 it has been the musical property of the Paris Opéra. The current Robert Wilson staging, first mounted at the Palais Garnier in 1997 as a co-production with the Salzburg Festival, has now been moved to the ample space of the company's Bastille theater.

As far as the conductor Sylvain Cambreling is concerned, this is the way it ought to be. The width of the Bastille stage does justice to Wilson's staging and designs, he says, and the size of the pit makes it possible to exploit the richness and variety of Debussy's score.

As presented at the Bastille, Cambreling and his fully populated orchestra, in a relatively elevated pit, made a convincing case for this musical approach, especially if one considers that the orchestra is arguably the opera's most important "character." It delivered its role with a richness and color that would not be possible in a pit as constricted as that of the Comique.

Wilson's staging is abstract to the point of ignoring the specifics of the libretto. The audience is left to imagine the fountain or the grotto, and Mélisande's long hair remains neatly done up chignon-like and never falls down to inflame Pelléas. The characters move on the stage in front of a wide screen that is bathed in an ever-changing combination of colors. Frida Parmeggiani's costumes suggest that the royal family of Allemonde is very well dressed: Mélisande in an elegant gown, Pelléas in a dapper white suit, Golaud in a full-length black outfit, for some reason with one black glove and one white.

It would be hard to improve on the cast, with José Van Dam a sonorously menacing Golaud, Simon Keenlyside an elegant baritone Pelléas, Mireille Delunsch a touchingly radiant Mélisande and the bass Ferruccio Furlanetto vocally solid as the aged King Arkel.

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