Monsieur Croche invites to the opera
Barbe & Doucet direct Pelléas et Mélisande in Liège (****) [live]
During 1888-89, 26-year-old Claude Debussy visits Bayreuth. There he attends Die Meistersinger, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal. It is of great influence on his development but the emancipation of Wagner does not take long. In almost all of his polemics on opera, he points his arrows on Wagner. "Wagner was a beautiful sunset that people have mistaken for a dawn," he mused when he had dipped his pen in Nietzschean vitriol as Monsieur Croche. "There is nothing more deplorable than that neo-Wagnerian school in which French genius is crushed by a lot of imitation Wotans in high boots and Tristans in velvet jackets." In this he was quite right: Wagnerian epigonism could obviously never be anything more than a dead end.
He spends twelve years working on Pelléas et Mélisande but then fails to come up with a sequel. "What can one write after Pelléas?" he sighs when a friend asks him how his new opera is progressing. Why did Debussy feel he had said it all with his only opera? For someone who had hoped to be the new dawn, this confession is nothing less than an admission of artistic impotence. The truth is that there is more Wagner in Debussy's only opera than the author would like to admit. Wagner's presence is constantly felt throughout the eight interludes. Debussy and Wagner connoisseur Pierre Boulez summed it up this way : "I think it is essential to remember that this opera, long touted as an aggressive manifesto of anti-wagnerism, finds one of its main sources in Wagner."
Debussy had an undisguised repulsion for the opera world of his time: the idolatry of Wagner made him tense; Italian production inspired no sympathy; French production irritated him. He had nothing but sarcasm for the advantageous poses of most singers, and took little interest in their vocal performances unless they served some musical truth or necessity. But six months after the premiere of Pelléas, he refutes much of his own revulsion when he writes in the music journal Musica: "Art is the most beautiful of lies. And no matter how hard we try to incorporate life into its everyday decor, we have to want it to remain a lie, otherwise it becomes a utilitarian thing, as sad as a factory. Do not the people as well as the elite come here in search of oblivion, which is yet another form of the lie? The Mona Lisa's very smile probably never existed materially, yet its charm is eternal. So let's not disillusion anyone by reducing dreams to too precise realities." With Pelléas, Debussy did not start a school. Yet with each reenactment, one can see again and again how the work confirms its status as an undeniably key work in the evolution toward the new objectivity of 20th century opera literature.
The opera may be called Pelléas et Mélisande, but Golaud is the only character who goes through a distinct dramatic evolution. It is the only character you can identify with as a spectator. Throughout the opera, he interrogates everyone, searching for the ultimate truth. Golaud is a full-time hunter. Hunting for truth is his raison d'être. That makes him sympathetic. For Golaud, meeting Mélisande is of great importance. He does not know what he will gain by the hand of the mysterious stranger but he knows what he will lose: the lovemaking with Princess Ursula. It is worth remembering that Golaud has a lot at stake from the start.
Mélisande is not a true theatrical character like the men around her. Rather, she is the personification of Das Ewig Weibliche. Mélisande is the sum total of all the fantasies that the men around her project onto her. They do so with much idealization because it drives male desire. Femme fatale or not, Mélisande brings two men to the brink of destruction. Or better : two men ruin themselves for her. For the third, the old blind Arkel, more dead than alive, her presence means the ultimate consolation. Mélisande's innocence seems pure but is it? After all, she indulges in an extramarital affair with her husband's half-brother. That we forgive her, along with Golaud, can only be explained in the light of Das Ewig Weibliche.
André Barbe and Renaud Doucet originally created this production for Parma, Cultural Capital of 2020, in co-production with Modena and Piacenza. The transparent front screen shows a forest of dead trees whose roots penetrate into subterranean passages. It is in a symbolist-decadent atmosphere in chiaroscuro (lighting: Guy Simard) that the directors have Mélisande accompanied by six veiled water nymphs wading processionally ankle-deep through shallow water. Is it the Styx? Is the luminous globe the water nymphs exchange with their master-a gentleman with a black wig in a white suit-a receptacle for the soul of a dead person? Later, at Mélisande's deathbed, it will be revealed that the gentleman in the white suit is the doctor. Is he to be understood as an outsider trying in vain to bring light into the dark Allemonde or as a messenger of death?
The medieval castle of Allemonde is shown in scale model form on an island, floating in the air à la Magritte. At one of the tiny windows, the spying Yniold will later posture in perspective distortion. We don't get to see the beggars in the cave. Nor do we see the shepherd and the sheep. We do see Yniold playing with his golden ball, a toy boat and with Mélisande's baby. The fact that the set pieces repeatedly descend from the stage tower is rather old-fashioned.
A bas-relief with a Greek-looking sleeping goddess with long locks of hair is the setting for the tenderest moment in the opera, the one in which the injured Golaud is cared for by his wife. Naturally, the bas-relief will also be used in the tower scene. Here we see Golaud at his most loving when consoling Mélisande, who expresses herself as unhappy. How Golaud radically changes his tone after noticing that she has lost the wedding ring is among the best moments of the evening.
Some rave about the fifth act. I continue to find it a disappointing anti-climax. There is no circular dramaturgy here as with Olivier Py, Claus Guth or Barrie Kosky. Those allowed Mélisande in her death scene to return to her starting point as "petite fille au bord de l'eau" thereby answering a number of questions.
Debussy rejects the conventional lyricism of Italian, French and German opera and gives absolutely no opportunity for vocal display. Richard Strauss is reported to have said after a performance of Pelléas that he had the impression of attending a rehearsal at which the singers spared their voices. The declamatory singing style in Pelléas is close to the prosody of the French language. Precise articulation is therefore of the utmost importance. Syllabic vocality rules and the end goal is French clarté.
The ravishing Nina Minasyan is an ideal Mélisande. She has the looks, the figure and the voice for the role. The voice does not seem to project very well but in this role for lyric soprano, it is not that important. "Mes longs cheveux descendent jusqu'au seuil de la tour" was very good. Lionel Lhote shone as Pelléas. He sings the part as a baritone with great ability and imagination. Simon Keenlyside, a Golaud with a gray wig, is strong enough in his interpretation to evoke sympathy for his character. The timbre seems to me to have darkened a bit with age but it is not that different from Lionel Lhote's. But a bass baritone he is not. The maximum distance in terms of timbre between the half-brothers is that of tenor to a bass baritone. You almost never get to hear that. For a Korean, the threshold is far too high in this piece in terms of command of the French language. Inho Jeong can only approximately portray an ideal Arkel. This is unfortunate because Arkel's beautiful monologue of the fourth act should be an obvious highlight. Marion Lebègue is not a contra-alt but sings an adequate Geneviève. Judith Fa as Yniold has a very small voice and is blown away by the orchestra during her solo scene with the golden ball. The orchestra should moderate here because with a boy's voice, the problem would be the same.
Boulez thought : "The challenge in performance lies in refraining from unnecessarily heroic gestures and grandiloquent attitudes, without lapsing into an atmosphere of timidity and mediocre reserve." The latter was by no means the fate of the ORW orchestra under Pierre Dumoussaud. Dumoussaud was the main reason for me to visit the production in Liège. His tenure in Paris had not gone unnoticed when he replaced Thomas Hengelbrock during Hamlet and managed to charge Ambroise Thomas' not-often-played work with searing intensity. Here he does it again. The warm string sound is striking, and the beautiful crescendi in the strings are among the most exciting of the evening. The atmospheric pages, such as the visit to the subterranean vaults, get all the detail required from double basses, low woodwinds and timpani. The voices of the naval chorus sounded atmospherically from the highest balcony. The Pelléas et Mélisande orchestra is relatively small yet possesses two harps. These obviously have a distinct function here as colored pencils in drawing out the magical orchestral fabric. Dynamically, it became an extreme reading ranging from a quasi-inaudible ppp to the peaks of emotional release during the eighth interlude. Dumoussaud's reading is essentially very romantic, a romanticism that is stripped down and does not revel in thick sounds. The orchestral splendor is the main reason to watch this production.
Debussy didn't give up opera after 'Pelleas', he just never brought another one to completion. He worked on the two Poe operas, fitfully, almost up to his death. Orledge's respectful completion of 'La Chute de la Maison Usher' is pretty convincing.