Pelléas et Mélisande, Barbican Hall, review: 'irresistible'

Simon Rattle dedicated these performances of Debussy’s opera to Pierre Boulez, who died last week. It was a poignantly fitting tribute: in Britain, Boulez conducted two unforgettable stagings of Pelléas – both benchmarks of my opera-going life – one at Covent Garden in 1970, the other (peerlessly directed by Peter Stein) for Welsh National Opera in 1992. 

And Rattle has a long history with this uniquely magical work too – most recently via a travesty of a production at Covent Garden in 2007, but also in 1993 in Amsterdam, where it was much more sensitively directed by Peter Sellars.

All of which suggests that this is an opera that won’t leave you alone – so many questions unanswered by the text, the music a shimmering mirage – and it’s no surprise that Rattle and Sellars have been drawn back to a further attempt to fathom its mysteries.

Sadly, Sellars’ contribution proved nugatory. Dressed in penitential black, the cast ran round the platform, on to a raised dais and through the forest of the orchestra. Lighting effects added some atmosphere, but the scenario’s precisely contrasted topography, with its dungeons and towers, its claustrophobic interiors and infinite exteriors, was muddled rather than elucidated: far better to have trusted Debussy’s powers of evocation and the audience’s imagination. 

More importantly, for an opera crucially concerned with the mystery of other people’s feelings, there was an embarrassing degree of school-play over-emoting in evidence – reminding me of my conviction that opera singers act much better when directors aren’t hobbling them.

Yet this remained a wonderful experience, with Rattle (always at his best in French repertory) drawing silken subtlety from the London Symphony Orchestra’s strings and kaleidoscopic colours from its wind and brass. The fourth-act climax was thrillingly judged, as was the dying fall of the fifth. 

Magdalena Kozena has too mature and resinous a mezzo-soprano for this role, but much of her singing was irresistibly gorgeous – notably in the third-act folk song. Her Pelléas was Christian Gerhaher, supremely artful in disguising that he too is really too sophisticated for music that calls for a Sinatra rather than a Fischer-Dieskau.

I have no reservations however, about Gerald Finley, who made a heart-rending Golaud, particularly moving in the final scene where he is identified as a handcuffed murderer. Franz-Josef Selig and Bernarda Fink brought great beauty to Arkel and Geneviève’s utterances; and Joshua Bloom made his mark as the Doctor, as did an unnamed (and unobtrusively miked) German chorister as the hapless Yniold. 

Shorn of its redundant visual aspect, the performance was being recorded for release on the LSO Live label. I shall be first in the queue to buy it.

Further performance tonight, Sunday evening: 020 7638 8891; www.barbican.org.uk