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Extracts about Pélleas et Mélisande taken from interviews with Gerald Finley, Angelika Kirchschlager and Simon Rattle
Gerald Finlay on Pélleas et Mélisande. Extracts from an interview with Dominic McHugh, 28 April 2007
http://www.musicalcriticism.com/interviews/finley.htm
…He [Finley] returns to Covent Garden on 11 May to play the role of Golaud in a new production of Debussy’s Pélleas et Mélisande, directed by Stanislas Nordey and conducted by Sir Simon Rattle. I caught up with Finley during rehearsals to find out how he’s approaching the piece.
Debussy completed only one opera and as a result, his operatic style is less familiar to audiences than those of more prolific figures such as Verdi or Mozart. Finley has a very clear idea of what Debussy’s strengths as an opera composer are, though.
‘He was certainly not afraid to use the orchestra as a dramatic participant. It’s been interesting to listen to Simon [Rattle] talking about playing Tristan and using the Wagnerian approach to get into Debussy, using motives in the orchestra or characters. It’s helpful to me because when my music appears, I know I have to go onstage!’ he jokes. ‘There’s a wonderful colouring in the orchestra that tells you about the characters; sometimes he tears apart the themes to tell you that the characters are falling to pieces in some way.
‘Dramatically, there’s lots of energy in the orchestra. The terrifying scene that I have with the boy is very menacing and brutal and has lots of racing heartbeats. The wonderful instances when Pélleas sings of light and there’s a luminescence in the orchestra, or when Mélisande’s hair falls over the balcony – there’s always a sense of beautiful pictorial writing in the music. His objective was to make the singers be actors as much as singers, and that is something we’ve worked hard on because our director is a theatre director and an actor. The way the language is written and notated in the score means that it should be quite naturally declaimed. It makes it very honest – the characters have to be very honest in their delivery. He didn’t want to write operas in the Verdian or Massenet tradition which surrounded him; he wanted to scrape all that away. He wanted the essence of the characters and conflicts to come forward. So there’s lots of recitative style and not many arias. Some people may feel from an operatic point of view that that’s frustrating because there are no great tunes for the singers; but Debussy compensates for that with these huge, lush waves – a sea of music underneath the whole time. For me, that’s very refreshing. Yet there are enough fragments of tunes to make it satisfying. From an audience point of view, it means you get straight to the drama. You may not come out humming the tunes, but the drama is intensely coloured and vital.’
Pélleas et Mélisande is based on a mythical Symbolist play of the same name by Maurice Maeterlinck. The mythical element was central to Debussy’s plan for his opera: when searching for a librettist for the piece, he wrote of his desire to find someone who would allow him to ‘graft his dream onto theirs’. Finley explains that this new production deals with the myth in a very effective way. ‘The production allows the mythic fable element to be revealed. The stage pictures are like the revelations of a sophisticated adult story book. The fabled kingdom of Allemonde that everyone except Mélisande inhabits is conjured up vividly – the costumes reflect an otherworldliness. She is in a particular costume which is very simple and the rest of us are in quite fancy outfits. It’s an attempt to make it otherworldly. I think it succeeds in that regard, which is great. I hope in some ways that the audience will think ‘Oh, they look ridiculous’. I hope they can understand that this isn’t meant to relate to real life and people – it’s a mythical presentation. It takes a theme from every scene – a line from each scene – and amplifies it. Some scenes literally have a line written in extremely large letters across the set, so that the essence of the scene is presented and that’s the overall approach. We’ve enjoyed working on the production. It’s stylised, with some Robert Wilson elements, just gestural movements. That can work with the music and can punctuate it too.
‘Producers of Pélleas et Mélisande are challenged about how to treat it. In the 1950s, there was desperation to make it real, and have doves flying about and lots of special effects. But we’re interested in a more human story about people who don’t know how to communicate with each other.’
Finley rehearsed this production at last year’s Easter Festival in Salzburg, together with co-stars Simon Keenlyside and Angelika Kirchschlager (who return for the Royal Opera’s presentation of it), though he fell ill and was unable to sing in any of the performances. He’s also performed it in concert before. What brings him back to the character of Golaud? ‘I’m the type of singer who likes to play characters who are generally liked!’ he laughs. ‘I started with Figaro and Papageno; these are roles that people enjoy seeing you do. But more recently I’ve realised that the baritone repertoire is much more full of tortured characters who are enormously enjoyable to do. They can’t quite figure out what’s wrong with their lives and they get clues from other people. Golaud’s perfect for this. There’s a history of what happens to the characters before the opera begins which is always being hinted at but is never quite explained. You get glimpses of it but don’t know why things happen. Golaud is a man in mid life who is searching for some clarity. The way they live is very dark and miserable. He thinks he’s found a source of life in Mélisande but somehow can’t hold her. He can’t grasp it. From their meeting onwards, the word that comes back again and again is ‘Pourquoi?’ – ‘Why?’. ‘Why can’t I understand this?’ He asks his son what’s going on between his half-brother Pélleas, and Mélisande – resorting to desperate measures like asking a child! There’s lots of psychological potential. His father is absent. His grandfather, Arkel, has a tough wisdom about him, but in the second scene Golaud talks of being frightened of his grandfather. So he has no strong male characters to turn to and there’s lots of confusion – and I love it! Why is he behaving like this? Why is he feeling like this? What is driving him? Obviously he’s a malevolent character and in the end he does some terrible things. But I want to portray the steps he takes and show the reasons for them.’
What does conductor Simon Rattle specifically bring to the piece? ‘His instinctive musicianship and his ability to oversee an epic orchestral piece is perfect. The beauty of Debussy is his complicated orchestration, which needs to be finely brought out. Simon feels a strong need to bring out the structural arcs; it’s a very symphonic piece in many ways. Simon’s a dramatic and instinctive person – quite theatrical in himself – but what’s wonderful is that he’s willing to offer the singers the vehicle to project the intensity of the characters while he has a firm grip on where things are going. Hearing him conduct the orchestra in this music is incredible.’
Extracts from an interview with Gerald Finley: Simon Thomas, musicomh.com, April 2007
http://www.musicomh.com/classical_features/gerald-finley_0407.htm
Slightly late for our meeting, Gerald Finley found himself winding through the labyrinthine corridors in the depths of the Royal Opera House. He says it reminds him of his opening line in Pelléas et Mélisande, which he's here to rehearse: "I can't find my way out of this forest".
I sense that lateness is not characteristic of Finley, although he does come to this production some time after his co-stars, having had to drop out of the Salzburg run because of illness. Now that he's caught up with Stanislas Nordey's production, he finds himself part of an extraordinarily talented team, which includes Angelika Kirchschlager, Simon Keenlyside and a certain Simon Rattle. He's clearly excited about the forthcoming performances and talks articulately about Debussy's enigmatic work and his character, the love-lorn Golaud. It is one of a series of tormented men he's played, and at which he excels, from Eugene Onegin, J Robert Oppenheimer, Owen Wingrave and perhaps surprisingly Mozart's Conte in David McVicar's interpretation of Le nozze di Figaro last season.
He describes the production of Pelléas as a fabled, storybook presentation, going as far as to have sets that open up and visually reveal themes. He prefers to see the costumes as "Elizabethan-style" rather than as clown outfits, which is how they have been described disparagingly by some critics. "They do make moving on stage not looking like a duck quite challenging", he admits.
He sees Golaud, the prince who finds but never quite gains his princess, as a man who is lost and who never manages to satisfy his need for power and control. "He's desperate to find something that makes sense. He doesn't understand love; for him, it's more of a behavioural state, rather than any revelation of himself. We want to expose him as someone who's very emotionally locked, unable to give or receive. It's a very contemporary issue."
"Debussy was looking for something that was half sung, half declaimed. We have our work cut out with that."
"Delivering the French is very challenging too. Debussy was looking for something that was half sung, half declaimed. We have our work cut out with that. The writing's extraordinary though. Simon (Rattle) was working on Wagner before doing this and he strongly brings out the leitmotivs which are vital to the music."
Extracts from Mélisande and I: Angelika Kirchschlager on Pelléas and Mélisande
http://www.classicalsource.com/db_control/db_features.php?id=4469
Mansel Stimpson talks to the Austrian mezzo-soprano about Covent Garden’s new production of Debussy’s opera…
…In the sphere of opera Angelika Kirchschlager cites both Nicholas Maw’s Sophie’s Choice, which provided her Covent Garden debut in 2002, and Pelléas et Mélisande as examples of works that just came up. “With Sophie’s Choice I could never have thought of it. I couldn’t know that the piece would be written or that anybody would think of me for it, but it turned out to be so important both in my singing career and for my personal development. However, without knowing Debussy’s opera, I always had Mélisande in mind. I knew the tale of Pelléas and Mélisande, that it was a love story but one a bit strange and difficult to grasp. Even their names seemed to suggest to me lonely figures. Whatever it was, I always wanted to be Mélisande, and when I was offered the role I accepted it without having even heard the music. Afterwards I looked at the score because it’s usually a soprano part and I began to worry if I’d be able to sing it all. But as it turns out the role is perfect and I just put myself completely into it.”
Premiered in 1902 Debussy’s opera may have its roots in romanticism but it was at the cutting edge in being an extraordinary study of human psyche. “It’s never just romantic but about the depths, the dark corners and the complicated connections. For that reason people who prefer to ignore all that just don’t want to see it, but from my point of view that’s life. Indeed in my particular philosophy, death, love and life are strongly interconnected. When Mélisande who is married to Golaud meets his half-brother Pelléas for the first time, I feel that something changes in her and that that change will remain with her until her last breath. When those two talk everything that is said has a double meaning, or rather it only has one meaning but double in the sense that the words they use are never direct but substitutes. It’s also a work full of symbolism, most famously there’s Mélisande’s long hair which gets caught in the bushes and which she later lets down. This hair is her life, it’s more or less herself: when she opens her hair she opens herself and there’s the long piece in which Pelléas sings about her hair. It is the most sensual scene that I know, and even more so when it’s obvious that it’s not just her hair that is the subject. I’ve seen productions in which the Mélisande had such long hair that she could hardly move and that’s just distracting and inelegant. I’m glad that in this production by Stanislas I have a very limited extension to my hair. Instead here and elsewhere he gives you a lot of space to think and to put your own imagination to work.”
Angelika is clearly very taken with this production even beyond the opportunity it gives her to sing with Keenlyside and with Gerald Finley (the production’s Golaud) and to work again with Sir Simon Rattle who conducted Sophie’s Choice also. “I love this production’s approach to Mélisande and would not want to play her in any other way. She’s no weeping, weak girl but someone with a huge soul, a very strong character even if the society she is in prevents her from living out her strength. In Act Four there’s a large orchestral interlude after the scene in which Golaud pulls me by the hair. That music is so painful, so emotional, and just one example of the importance of the orchestra in this work. In this production we watch Mélisande at this point. She’s in pain as she has been before, but she refuses to give in to it and to the people, especially the men, who have inflicted this on her. Very slowly we see her get up from the ground and stand. That’s my favourite scene in the entire opera.”
Finally we move the focus of our talk to Golaud and to Pelléas and Mélisande together. Of Golaud Angelika says: “He’s Mélisande’s opposite and his fear makes him a very poor human being. What he sees in Mélisande’s eyes is evidence that she has life in a way that he does not and, later in Act Five, there’s a scene that always gives me goose-bumps: it’s the moment when he observes how Pelléas and Mélisande look at each other and it’s apparent that he can’t bear it because he knows that this is what he himself will never have.” As for the lovers, the opera holds back their open acknowledgement of their love until very late on. Prior to that, the true state of their feelings has been communicated only indirectly in the Pinteresque use of words that on the surface mean other things and directly through the unique sound of Debussy’s orchestral palette.
Angelika, however, brings her own experience of life to bear in interpreting the opera’s central relationship: “What happens when they are together is that they discover that then their souls are completely relaxed. They don’t have to be anything that they don’t want to be. They can breathe, they can laugh, and each recognises this shared ease. If you can find that then it means that you can be yourself and be accepted for who you are regardless of those aspects that may seem strange or difficult even to yourself. That is to be with somebody who can take that and who will be on your side. When that happens I think we should call it love and that’s what you have in this relationship. She’s just breathing in every word that is said to her and I don’t think that there’s anything stronger or more intimate than what is experienced here by Pelléas and Mélisande.”
Extracts from an interview with Angelika Kirchschlager: Warwick Thompson for Bloomberg, 11 May 2007
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=a80BghDF56PA&refer=muse
How Mezzo Kirchschlager Moved From Drumming to Skin-Tight Dress
The heroine of Debussy's ``Pelleas et Melisande'' is usually portrayed as a wispy creature in pastels, not a vamp in a slinky red sheath. Operatic traditionalists and the faint-hearted had better stop reading right now. For her appearance as Melisande at the Royal Opera House in London, lively Austrian mezzo Angelika Kirchschlager is donning a 1930s-style, floor-length, bright red dress with sensuously weighted pleats. It's not the usual kind of outfit for a character who mostly floats wide-eyed through a vague world of enigmatic symbolism. “It's just as well I don't weigh 100 kilos,” says Kirchschlager…
…Now she's returned to sing Debussy's mysterious heroine, in a production by Stanislas Nordey which was first seen at last year's Salzburg Easter Festival.
Vampy or Sexy
What's the deal with this red dress, I ask? “I don't think it's that vampy or sexy,” she says. “It's not meant to be. After all, it doesn't show any leg, or any cleavage.” What does it show? “It shows how alive Melisande is, how naturally and fully alive. For the first three acts, there's no other red in the design, so the dress sets her apart from the world she's in.”
The costumes were designed by Raoul Fernandez. Did he have Kirchschlager in mind all along? “Perhaps. I think he realized the dress wouldn't suit anyone too large, and though I'm not super-slim, I'm not super-fat either, just normal. I certainly feel absolutely free and comfortable in it. And that's important. Your characterization can change completely depending on whether you feel comfortable or not in a costume.”
We never learn very much about the enigmatic Melisande, who has forgotten her own history. She marries Golaud, a prince of Allemonde, but falls in love with his half-brother Pelleas. At one stage, Pelleas entwines himself in her 20-foot long hair. Later, Golaud pulls her angrily around the stage by the same tresses.
Sensual Symbol
“I've had some hair extensions put in,” says Kirchschlager, showing me a plastic clip deep in her curly, but normally shoulder-length, locks. They're not 20 feet long, I comment. “It's better. The hair should be symbolic.” Symbolic of what? “Melisande herself. At first she doesn't want to unwind her hair for Pelleas, because she's too afraid. Then she does, and he comments how much he loves it. She understands that he's really referring to her. It's very true. It's what happens whenever two people meet.”
How is the scene staged here? “In our production, I'm standing high above the stage. I fling my arms open instead of letting my hair down, and Simon Keenlyside (as Pelleas) is bathed in light, and dances in it. It's so much more sensual than seeing actual 20-feet hair. In fact, it's incredibly erotic. We're apart, but connected. It's like phone sex!”
Rattle and Drums
Kirchschlager tells me how much she's enjoying working with conductor Simon Rattle, and describes him as fully open to the singers. “Perhaps even too open. It seems that Simon Keenlyside was getting faster in his phrases, but I was slowing down, drawing them out. Simon Rattle was trying to follow us both! I think it shows how generous he is. We had to work out a compromise.”
Extracts from an interview with Angelika Kirchschlager: Jessica Duchen for The Independent, 7 May 2007. http://news.independent.co.uk/people/profiles/article2517030.ece
This diva's got balls
Angelika Kirchschlager, bright and vivacious in jeans and a leather jacket, is anything but a traditional diva. But then, mezzos, forced by the prevalence of "trouser roles" into the shadow of glamourpuss sopranos, often have to be twice as good as their higher counterparts to get as far into the public eye; and Kirchschlager, about to star in Debussy's Symbolist masterpiece Pélléas et Mélisande at the Royal Opera House, used to be no exception.
Her voice is among the finest of its type, with a satiny texture, a glorious, light-catching gleam, bell-like precision and an ideal colouristic range illuminated by intuitive, perceptive intelligence. Her repertoire embraces everything from Handel and Mozart to Nicholas Maw's harrowing adaptation of William Styron's Sophie's Choice, which was premiered at Covent Garden in 2002.
…Nothing in the heady and oppressive world of this opera is ever exactly as it seems. Based on Maurice Maeterlinck's play, it's filled with sensual wonders in which every word conceals layer upon layer of potential meaning. It's not inappropriate that Kirchschlager has nothing like the role's traditional interpretation up her leather sleeve. Instead of portraying the unlikely heroine as a fey, other-worldly mystery, she and the director, Stanislas Nordey, have discovered a heroine who is, in Kirchschlager's words, "emancipated beyond the world".
In the opera's shadowy, oppressive land, the king's grandson, Golaud, discovers the mysterious Mélisande weeping by a fountain, takes her home and marries her. She is drawn, however, to his younger brother, Pélléas, and the resulting love triangle gradually destroys all of them. Mélisande's past is hinted at but never revealed; as for the present, she often seems to have no control over her destiny. "What I like in our production is that it's a little bit turned upside down," says Kirchschlager. "She's not a weak woman who cannot defend herself. Stanislas Nordey sees her as a very strong person in the position of not being able to show and live her strength. It makes so much sense and I completely connect with this character. At this point of my life, doing this role is like a meditation for me. I feel so free in this production: she's always looking, listening, aware."
One of the most moving moments for Kirchschlager is the orchestral interlude after the jealous Golaud pushes Mélisande to the ground. "Then comes this huge music, this intensely painful drama; in our production she stands up again and faces her life, which is absolutely terrible. The music is full of hate, strength, desperation and decision, and just standing on this empty stage listening to it is an incredible experience. It's like a power point on a mountain where suddenly all the energy goes through you and you feel so safe and so strong."
Extracts from an interview with Simon Rattle: Tom Service for The Guardian, Friday May 11, 2007
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2076443,00.html
The mighty 'wuah'
Simon Rattle is already on his second cup of Starbucks' finest before he starts his rehearsal at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, for a production of Debussy's only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande. After a run-through of the first scene of act three, he's not completely happy. "It's a bit early in the morning: we need to find our velvety sound; it still sounds too heavy." He wants more from the orchestra's cello section; one chord, maybe the most violent moment in the whole piece, needs to be played like a "small nuclear explosion". The singers need help, too. Tom Norrington, the production's young Yniold, becomes the butt of Rattle's humour: "You really need to say 'non,' not 'oui,' Tom, otherwise we're in another opera."
What's miraculous is that in the space of an hour or so, Rattle transforms the sound of the Royal Opera orchestra. Instead of the lumpen playing at the start, there is shimmering, atmospheric brilliance. The singers grow in confidence as imperfections of ensemble are ironed out, and the performance blooms. It's an object lesson in how to rehearse, a revelation of Rattle's gifts as a communicator, verbally and gesturally coaxing the best out of his musicians. "I wondered what they were playing last night," he says to me in a break later on, "and it was a ballet evening, and it makes a difference, you know." Playing for the rhythmic strictures of ballet is a different discipline from the subtle give-and-take of opera, "but you can hear the sound change".
And you can: when this Pelléas opens, it will be an orchestral triumph, whatever you think of Stanislas Nordey's production. Rattle has conducted this staging before, for the Salzburg Easter festival last year, with the Berlin Philharmonic, where he has been in charge for five years - the summit of a conductor's career. "The speed of reaction, or fitting together with a beat and with singers, is a complete miracle with the Royal Opera House orchestra," he says. "It's second to none. These are things that take forever with an orchestra like the Berlin Philharmonic."
… Pelléas, based on Maurice Maeterlinck's 1892 symbolist drama, is an opera of contained passions and repressed desires. "It's the most heartbreaking and moving opera there is," says Rattle. "But you feel strangely uplifted by it. And of course it's the most sensuously, physically beautiful opera you can imagine. We were all so sad in Berlin when the performances were over."