Plot Details: This opinion reveals major details about the movie's plot.


Although love blooms, jealousy rages, one character is killed and another dies, not much hard action really takes place in ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’, the sole operatic work by French composer Claude Debussy. The opera's libretto draws on the symbolist mediaeval play by Maurice Maeterlinck as its source, but it’s really Debussy’s Impressionist music that makes this into a memorable and magnificent, if somewhat doleful, masterpiece.

PLOT

The story opens with Golaud, a knight, a widower and grandson of King Arkël of the mythical land of Allemonde, out hunting in a gloomy forest. He stumbles upon a young waif weeping by a fountain. She is Mélisande, a mysterious creature who, like him is also lost, and unclear about who she really is. Her loveliness immediately captures the heart of Golaud. When darkness falls, she submits to Golaud’s protection and soon after becomes his wife.

When she arrives at the castle, Mélisande is placed in the care of Golaud's younger half-brother, Pelléas, as Golaud goes off to battle. A mutual attraction quickly develops between the two that will later lead to tragedy. Mélisande resolves to remain faithful to Golaud, however. In act 2, while playing near a well in the company of Pelléas, Mélisande accidentally drops her wedding ring into the water and loses it. As she will later learn, at the very instant the ring had fallen into the well, Golaud’s horse had also bolted suddenly straight into a tree, tossing Golaud to the ground and falling on top of him. Later, as Mélisande cares for the injured Golaud, she learns of the inexplicable accident with the horse. When Golaud notices the missing ring, he demands that she retrieve it from the grotto which Mélisande has told him is where she’d lost it. Filled with fear of her husband, she goes off, with Pelléas accompanying her to the cave. The ring remains lost, of course.

The growing but hidden love between Mélisande and Pelléas does not go unnoticed by Golaud, who goes into fits of destructive, jealous madness. The would-be lovers do not meet, but one evening, Pelléas stands outside Mélisande’s window and begs her to let down her Rapunzel-length hair, which she finally does. Pelléas caresses and kisses the long locks with great passion (portrayed on the DVD cover art above), but Golaud, accompanied by his son, Yniold, chances upon them and tells them to stop their childish behaviour. Pelléas leaves, while Golaud uses his young son to spy upon Mélisande from outside her room, with little gained by the action. He later accuses Mélisande of infidelity, handles her roughly, which prompts Pelléas to ask his brother to be more gentle with his wife, who has grown unhappy and whose health has become frail.

Pelléas and Mélisande will meet for the last time at the fountain outside the castle to say goodbye and never see each other again. Golaud, now consumed by jealousy, sees the pair together and strikes his half-brother down with his sword and causes Mélisande, now heavy with child, to collapse in terror. Mélisande gives birth to a baby girl, which weakens her greatly and she becomes bedridden. Golaud grows distraught over his murderous deed, asks forgiveness of his wife, and yet he cannot let go of Mélisande’s admitted but innocent love for Pelléas. The story finally closes with the death of Mélisande.

CAST

Character --- Performer (voice)

Mélisande --- Alison Hagley (soprano)
Pelléas --- Neill Archer (baritone)
Golaud, King Arkël's grandson --- Donald Maxwell (baritone)
Arkël, King of Allemonde --- Kenneth Cox (bass)
Geneviève, mother of Pelléas and Golaud --- Penelope Walker (mezzo-soprano)
Yniold, Golaud's son by his first marriage --- Samuel Burkey (soprano/treble)
Le Berger/Le Médecin --- Peter Massocchi (bass)

BEAUTIFUL, ELUSIVE MUSIC BY DEBUSSY

On viewing this elegant, modernistic stage version from 1992 directed by Peter Stein, I was completely entranced from the first note to last by the seductive beauty of the music and the production. Much like the Straussian and Wagnerian operas, Debussy’s work unspools a continuous, silken thread of melodies that gleams and shimmers like the cool moonlight reflected on the ocean’s gently ebbing and cresting waves. There are no arias to speak of. Basses and violoncellos predominate in the orchestral mix, and an occasional trumpet or other brass pierces the air for dramatic emphasis. The music swells at times like a river about to overflow its banks, and one’s heart can also feel as if it’s ready to burst forth, too, brimming with those impassioned themes wrought by Debussy. One can hear strains recalling the composer’s ‘La Mer’ here and there, and smooth legato lines are the order of the day. The score is rich with chromatic progressions, shifting and syncopated tempi that create a mysterious and haunting musical canvas against which the singers sketch out their respective characters and situations. Very much like the contemporaneous Impressionist paintings of Monet and Van Gogh, Debussy’s music paints profound emotional colours that are as elusive as the creature, Mélisande herself.

The mellifluous French language only enhances the exquisiteness of the experience. Of the singers’ diction I can congratulate the cast for their clarity and proper accents that enable even one as semi-literate in the language as this writer to actually grasp many of the French libretto's words.

EVOKING THE ROMANTIC AURA OF ROSSETTI and BURNE-JONES

This production, a cooperative effort by the Welsh National Opera and Châtelet Théatre Musical de Paris, was performed on a stage without an audience in attendance. Especially striking are the dark shadows and half-lights that dominate the spare sets designed by Karl-Ernst Herrmann. The side walls narrow toward the back of the stage, and much like a camera’s diaphragm, similarly dark, matte walls slide in from the wings or from the ceiling and floor to close (or open) a scene. A brilliant giant orb symbolising the sun in a later scene becomes all the more dazzling against the sombrely lit stage. Muted colours are used for the simple costumes designed by Moidele Bickel, while the look of the entire production evokes the Pre-Raphaelite romanticised mediaeval world of Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones, as befits this mythical tale of tragic love that’s set in the Middle Ages.

EXCELLENT CAST, CONDUCTOR, ORCHESTRA

Guided with intelligence and taste by Peter Stein, the entire cast are superb in their respective roles. With her radiant, graceful and limpid voice and naturalistic acting, English soprano Alison Hagley invests Mélisande with the requisite childlike innocence and vulnerability. Scotsman Donald Maxwell might have been plucked whole from a Sir Walter Scott novel, looking and sounding convincingly as the knight, Golaud, who goes once too far in his jealous rages. His imposing bass vocal suggests a character not to be trifled with, and one easily understands Mélisande’s awe of her husband. English tenor Neill Archer looks like the ideal youth with his soft chestnut mane, and unblemished look and vocal, and fits the role of Pelléas to a tee. His clear, lilting and tender voice gives the character a purity equal to that of Mélisande's. Even Yniold has quite a bit of singing to do here, and he’s played and sung without vibrato by a young boy, Samuel Burkey.

Conductor Pierre Boulez, who has long championed this work, elicits the most lyrical, symphonic sounds in Debussy’s score from the excellent Welsh National Opera Orchestra. He sweeps you away on a glorious, fluid raft of notes to a mediaeval kingdom where this tale of doomed romance unfolds. When the DVD’s Digital Surround Sound is deployed through a good stereo system, it’s all you can do not to succumb to the lush orchestration of this intensely moving music.

DVD PRODUCTION

The easily navigable menu pages have a soothing, navy blue background with white letters in script and large circles for the figurative ‘buttons’. Superior sound can be had through the Digital Surround Sound feature, as mentioned earlier.

Peter Stein’s video direction is seamless in the way it focuses on the most vital action onstage, unhampered as it is by the limitations of a truly ‘live’ staging. It gives the viewer the best vantage point, giving one a greater involvement with the onstage events. Between scenes, the video cuts to the printed orchestral score, with the camera gliding down the pages as it follows the interval music, to settle gently upon the opening bars of the subsequent section, when the picture then dissolves into the next scene onstage.

The DVD comes in two discs, which seems one disc too many and probably bumps up the price of the set unreasonably. The skimpy bonus features include just a few production stills, and most of the material consists of trailers for other Deutsche Grammophon opera DVDs.

CONCLUSION

In all, I’m rather surprised to have found this opera as compelling and bewitching as I do. I was never too fond of Debussy’s works except for some piano bits in his Children’s Suite, and perhaps his ‘Claire de Lune’. His ‘La Mer’ always left me in a musically confused state of mind. ‘Pelléas et Mélisande’ might not be the most accessible work out there even for classical music and opera fans, and I was fully prepared to be annoyed at best, and bored at least, by it. It was not to be so, however. So do give this a try, and even you might just find its posh and subtle charms wholly irresistible. Five stars.

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DVD Notes:

CLAUDE DEBUSSY
Pelléas et Mélisande
Drame lyrique en cinq actes et douze tableaux
Sur un livre de Maurice Maeterlinck

Orchestra and Chorus of Welsh National Opera
Chorus Master: Gareth Jones
Condutor: Pierre Boulez

Stage Production by Welsh National Opera/Châtelet Théatre Musical de Paris
Stage Producer and Director: Peter Stein
Video Director: Peter Stein

Two Discs (contrary to the entry in amazon.com)
Booklet has synopsis in English, French and German
Subtitles: French (original language), English, German, Spanish and Chinese
Bonus Features: Picture Gallery(stills) of production at the Welsh National Opera
and trailers for other DG opera works on DVD
Runtime: 158 mins
[c] 1992
Release date: October 29, 2002
Deutsche Grammophon
List Price: $38.98 (can be had for much less from amazon.com resellers)



Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Video Occasion: Fit for Friday Evening
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older