What do you get if you take away everything that people love about opera?
Pelleas Et Melisande.
No big arias, no patter songs, no soaring coloratura, and no big crescendos.
Still, Debussy’s composition along with Yannick’s attentive conducting has me on the edge of my seat. I never lose interest or focus.
The music undulates and repeats, undulates and repeats, undulates and repeats to give me time and then more time to really chew on the emotion of the orchestra. Imagine an episode of the Brady Bunch where Marcia just brushes her hair for the entire episode.
Pelleas is a meditation on symbols, at times fetishistic as with Melisande’s hair.
In a bright Neo-classical setting, Isabel Leonard is attentive to each note while her grandfather Arkel steals more than a scene or two. I wonder sometimes if a scene is written for the spotlight, or if the performer champions their character to just go for it and turn the spotlight themselves.
Interestingly, today is a double-header and this evening I am also going to see Adriana Lecouvreur, an opera that couldn’t be more different. Where Pelleas pushes the boundaries of opera, Lecouvreur will double down to the brink of parody. To compare and contrast these two really feels like a masters course in opera.
So what is Pelleas Et Melisande all about? It begins with Golaud retrieving the mysterius Melisandes’ lost crown in water and then marrying her. Unfortunately for everyone she later falls in love with his brother Pelleas. The opera unfolds through the imagistic symbols of golden balls, long hair, rings, and crowns toward the climactic end of Golaud’s suspicions about Pelleas and Melisande.
Notes on the production
________________________________
Composer…………………………….. Claude Debussy
Melisande……………………………… Isabel Leonard
Pelleas……………………………..……. Paul Appleby
Golaud………………………………..…. Kyle Ketelsen
Genevieve………………………………Marie-Nicole Lemieux
Arkel……………………………….…..… Ferruccio Furlanetto
Conductor……………………………. Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Metropolitan Opera
1/19/19