★★★☆☆
The perfect setting for its patrons’ preferred diet of bel canto comedies, Garsington Opera’s glass-walled pavilion ill suits Michael Boyd’s production of Pelléas et Mélisande. When stage lighting is the only light, suspension of disbelief is easy. When sunshine intrudes on a drama of darkness, secrecy and decay, everyone has to work harder, the audience included. Giggle at Mélisande dropping her wedding ring if you must (and some did) but this is not The Thieving Magpie.
Scenery bedeviled Pelléas et Mélisande from its inception. Debussy’s adaptation of Maeterlinck’s morbid tale of disconnection and loneliness — all that reaching, all that deflecting, the relentless interrogation by a jealous, unloved husband, the abuse of innocence, the murder, the birth — was expanded to provide orchestral