I read with great interest the postings about Pelleas et Melisande. I
also had trouble with the opera, until I got perspective on the work
from reading various critiques, analyses, and biographical material on
Debussy.( If interested, read the excellent critical biography of
Debussy by Edward Lockspeiser).
What impressed me especially about the Pelleas postings was how
strikingly intuitive many people were who claimed to have no formal
musical training.
Several people mentioned that they just couldn't get Pelleas from
CD's, but it all made sense when they saw a performance (usually on
video). It may interest these people to know that Debussy himself
forbade a proposed concert performance of Pelleas. He said that music,
text, and stage picture were absolutely integrated in this work, and
that a concert performance would fail utterly ---- that the music alone
would make no sense to an audience.
Of all composers, Debussy was among the most literary and visual.
Just the titles of so many of his purely instrumental works indicate
that. Debussy was close friends not only with French composers, but
also with many of the leading French painters and authors of the day.
Debussy had a career-long, profound love-hate relationship with
Wagner's work (like so many French artists --- as well as non-artists
--- of the day).He made three "pilgrimages" to Bayreuth, where he heard
Tristan, Meistersinger. and Parsifal.
Despite Debussy's sarcastic writings on Wagner, Pelleas may well be
the most fully achieved Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk. The orchestral
writing is a tissue of leitmotiven, though of course far more subtle
than Wagner's usage, in terms of both texture and instrumentation.
I found it very helpful to listen once to Pelleas while concentrating
on the orchestra ( mentally blocking out singing and words), so as to
get the musical continuity, the leitmotven and their frequent dramatic
"comments", and Debussy's precise use of orchestral color to embody
dramatic meanings.
The vocal writing is of course often a subdued "Sprechgesang",so the
occasions when the voice suddenly bursts out passionately are deeply
thrilling.
The stereotype still widely persists that Pelleas is too subdued and
pale throughout. Nonsense. Underneath the surface of the deceptively
quiet music, a suppressed violence or eroticism often lurks. When these
passions burst out, therefore, they blaze.
The scene where the paranoid Golaud drags Melisande around the room by
her hair is really terrifying, far beyond being merely rhetorical or
melodramatic. When Pelleas findly declares his love to Melisande, voice
and orchestra pour out gloriously. Golaud's scene with Yniold beneath
Melisande's window is hair-raising. Golaud and Pelleas alone in the
subterranean caverns beneath the castle is menacing.
The scene immediately following has Pelleas almost hysterically
repeating that now he can breathe "out here in the open air"---- while
Golaud says almost nothing. Pelleas is pitiable in his self-deception,
while Golaud's long silence is far more ominous than any words could
be.
I finally got one scene that never seemed to fit before. This is the
scene with Yniold alone, playing with a ball and then losing it when it
rolls under a rock. His attention then turns to the sheep going home
for the evening, and he remarks that the sheep "have stopped talking".
As the Shepherd passes, Yniold asks him why the sheep have become so
silent. The shepherd answers,"They are not going back to the stable
tonight," and moves on. Yniold says to himself, "Then where are they
going? Where will they sleep?"
Of course the (unstated) implication is that they are going to the
slaughter. And now the scene makes perfect sense ---- it foreshadows
the love scene between Pelleas and Melisande, at the end of which
Golaud rushes out from the bushes and stabs Pelleas with his sword.
Like so many French artists and intellectuals from Baudelaire onward,
Debussy was fascinated with Edgar Allan Poe. We're all disappointed
that Debussy never completed his two one-act Poe operas, "The Fall of
the House of Usher" and "The Devil in the Belfry".
What is not well known, though, is that Debussy had "Usher" in mind
when writing "Pelleas". The mysterious castle of Allemonde, its sunless
forests,subterranean diseased caverns where "the water is stagnant",
were all influenced by Debussy's preoccupation with "Usher".
Inarticulate Melisande, who dies of a mysterious illness, is a sister
to Poe's shadowy women, such as Ligeia, Annabel Lee, or Lenore. Pelleas
himself is consciously modelled on the neurasthenically hypersensitive
Roderick Usher.
There's more that's fascinating about this amazing, unique opera.
Post by Paul GoodmanHello,
This is an opera that I never really seemed to get from just listening
to recordings. However, I recently bought the DVD with Pierre Boulez
conducting this work with the Welsh National Opera. Being able to
actually SEE what is going on has really changed my outlook on this
work. Not only do I not think that it is boring anymore, I find
myself wanting to see and hear it again and again. I highly recommend
this performance. It has really opened my eyes to what a great opera
this can be.
--
Paul Goodman