Thoughts on Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande

[mcq]

Debussy began work on Pelleas et Melisande in 1893 upon attending the premiere of Maurice Maeterlinck's play, a work that had profoundly affected the young composer and would continue to exert its dark fascination on him for the rest of his life.  Its composition would consume him for 9 years until its premiere in 1902 but he would continue to tinker with the orchestration until his death in 1918. Specifically, Debussy was attracted by a text that was notable for its suggestive and oblique qualities (as opposed to literal exposition) in which sensations such as loss and loneliness were subtly alluded to and keenly evoked.  The dialogue in the original play is intentionally plain and unadorned, close to the rhythms and inflections of speech, yet does not fully communicate the emotions of the characters. The addition of Debussy's music  forms the emotional bridge from the original text to the listener and enables the expressive force of the words to control the dramatic action.  Subtly delineated by Maeterlinck in his play, his characters remain mere ciphers - elusive, amorphous and, almost, out of reach - but the incorporation of Debussy's evocative music opens up a wealth of emotional richness.  There are musical phrases that express a character's feelings, which organically develop as the character's own feelings change.  The union between music and text is so seamless that musical impressions are formed in the listener's mind of a single moment in time comprising the physical movement of the landscape around the protagonists as well as the emotional turbulence brewing within.

The importance of Pelleas et Melisande for Debussy is the way in which he asserts his identity as a new and original composer of music, as opposed to an imitator who would be consigned to the footnotes of history.  In the late 1880s, Debussy had found himself under the spell of Richard Wagner, visiting Bayreuth in 1888 and 1889 (to attend performances of Die Meistersinger von Nuremburg, Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal).  In a letter to a friend , he wrote that "The first act of Tristan und Isolde is the most beautiful thing I know.  In its depth of emotion, which grasps and embraces you like a caress, it makes you suffer:  what I mean is, you experience the same feelings as Tristan without doing violence to your own spirit or your own heart."  He recognised, however, that it was essential to his development as an artist to break free from these constricting shackles, and to resist this extreme depth of Romantic emotion.  Debussy's music remains profoundly influenced by Wagner but there are significant differences between the two composers.  

Debussy's orchestrations are lighter and more refined and call to mind the concentration on primary colours that engaged the Impressionist painters of his time.  There is an apparent simplicity and refinement about his music that belies the composer's labours.  The economy of means is particularly striking.  Everything is reduced to the bare essentials.  The merest shudder of the melodic line can evoke in the listener impressions of shame, regret and  loss (to name but three sensations).  

Perhaps the greatest difference between Debussy and Wagner lies in the former's avoidance of musical extremes.  There remains at all times a sense of harmonious refinement and reflective calm. The emotional disordances  that are presented in Pelleas et Melisande are, on the surface, a world apart from those expressed in Tristan und Isolde in their sense of interiority and which remain declarations of intimacy expressed in the most private terms.  There is no greater example of this than the scene in which Pelleas expresses his love to Melisande.  When she reciprocates his love, he comments that she said it with a voice that could have come from the other side of the world.  This is the most emotionally dramatic moment of the entire opera but Debussy chooses to incorporate a series of silences into his musical accompaniment.

Crucial to Debussy's emergence as an original was his immersion in the poetry of his time by contemporaries such as Charles Baudelaire, Stephane Mallarme and Paul Verlaine.  Specifically, he was liberated by the the inherent musicality of this new poetry's uneven metre.  The two most important compositions of Debussy's prior to beginning work on Pelleas et Melisande were Cinq poemes de Charles Baudelaire (which demonstrated a profound understanding of the limitless possibilities inherent in the rhythms and accents of language that Baudelaire had pioneered in his work) and Prelude a l'apres-midi d'un faune (inspired by Mallarme's poem, a masterpiece of impressionist expressivity that is timelessly evocative and which achieves an otherworldly sense of the ethereal that is gossamer-light in its delicate transparancy).  

Melisande is among the strangest, most unknowable of any character within the operatic repertoire, bar Kundry in Wagner's Parsifal.  Ostensibly an innocent, there are moments of duplicity and disingenuousness as she appears to beguile and entrap, in turn, both Golaud and Pelleas.  She appears to long for nothing more than personal freedom, attaching herself to men that can extricate her from apparent entrapment.  When we first see her, she is sitting by a pool, weeping.  When Golaud stumbles upon her, he spots the crown which she thrown into the water.  Was this crown given to her as an expression of love and did she cast it away to sever all links with a previous lover (in much the same way as she would carelessly throw Golaud's ring into the pool later in the opera)?  When she meets Pelleas, she immediately senses his innocence.  As their friendship develops, there remains the question as to whether she genuinely falls in love with him or whether this is a game designed to provoke her husband to anger, and, ultimately, to extricate her from a relationship that that she is unwilling to pursue.   Later in the opera, when Pelleas asks her whether she is telling him the truth, she mentions that she only lies to her husband, and never to Pelleas, yet she plainly lies when she describe her first meeting with Golaud in the forest and alleges that he attempted to kiss her.   When young Yniold witnesses the lambs being led to the slaughter, is Pelleas the lamb that is to be sacrificed?  

But Melisande remains a deeply ambiguous character who resists any attempt to pigeonhole her.  More than one reference is made to Melisande's wide open eyes which never appear to close.  On one hand, this may refer to the depiction of young women in Pre-Raphaelite paintings of the period.  Or it may well refer to a bemusement at a life which has treated her roughly and which she is ill-equipped to survive.  Perhaps it is a startled expression which is indicative of some kind of traumatic shock that she has been subject to.  I think of the opening scene where she is found weeping by a pool and Golaud asks her, "Why are you crying?" and Melisande flinches at the sound of his voice, apparently disturbed from a dazed stupor, and cries out, "Don't touch me, don't touch me!" And then, later, he asks, "Has anyone wronged you?", she replies, "I don't want to tell you, I cannot tell you".  This is strongly suggestive of a woman who has been violated, and she appears to maintain this defensive stance toward any physical advances from Golaud (which makes her pregnancy all the more surprising).  Perhaps Melisande wishes for nothing more than her own destruction by encouraging Golaud's incipient sense of mistrust and jealously as she spends more and more time with Pelleas.

If I exhibit ambiguity towards Melisande, Pelleas on the other hand is clearly an innocent.  A childlike character with a fascination for nature, he does not appear to have any friends, and crucially, has not had any prior relationships with women, a point that I believe Melisande intuits at an early stage in their relationship.  His father is dying and he appears to spend a lot of time by himself.  He appears to want to travel beyond the bounds of the castle but is prevented from doing so by his grandfather.  There is a strong sense that he is not valued highly by his grandfather, Arkel, perhaps because of his lack of physical prowess.   Golaud is clearly being groomed for succession to the throne.  Touchingly, there is barely a mention of Pelleas in the final scene.  There are echoes in his character of Hamlet, in a sense of prevarication and of not taking any decisive action.  The biggest moment in his life occurs when he tells Melisande of his love for her.  At that moment, he overcomes his fear of Golaud and when he realises that his brother has witnessed his kiss with Melisande, I believe he willingly sacrifices himself by throwing himself on his brother's sword in order to protect Melisande.  The question is whether he has asserted himself in noble defiance of his brother's brutal hegemony and in protection of the life of Melisande, whom he believes is in mortal danger from his brother, or whether he has died in vain, a mere pawn in Melisande's machinations.  

Many of the scenes we observe of Pelleas and Melisande together are elliptical in nature and merely hint at their burgeoning relationship.  Crucially, we gain the clearest glimpse into their strange attachment when relayed by another innocent, young Yniold, as he is forced by his father to spy on the two in Melisande's room.  The boy describes the two staring unblinklingly at each other and at the light.  Their open eyes indicate their innocence, of course, but also a fear of the darkness.  Melisande is attracted to the light because she associates with the darkness the traumatic experience which she has apparently obliterated from her subconscious mind.  Whereas Golaud is attracted to the dark because the light forces him to contemplate the reality of a life without his late wife.  Perhaps he seeks the darkness of his surroundings and his clouded mind to avoid thinking too much on the horrors of the past.  Of Pelleas's past, we know little.  Perhaps, like Melisande, he is also the victim of some traumatic experience and prefers his own company outside the castle to the oppressing darkness within its walls.

Golaud is a fascinating character, sometimes dismissed as an ominous presence of simmering jealousy and incipent anger.  But I find him deserving of sympathy.  After all, when we first see him, he is wandering alone in a forest, lost in his life after the loss of his wife.  This image is strongly suggestive of Dante at the beginning of his Inferno:  "When I had journeyed half of our life's way, I found myself within a shadowed forest, for I had lost the path that does not stray.  Ah, it is hard to speak of what it was, that savage forest, dense and difficult, which even in recall renews my fear: so bitter death is hardly more severe!" When he finds Melisande, does he see someone who reminds him of his lost wife?  We never discover exactly what happened to his wife.  But it is clear that he torments himself not only for her loss but also but his inability to prevent her death.  Does he project his feelings for his late wife on to Melisande?  The ring that he weds her certainly appears to be the same ring that he wedded his late wife with and it is the loss of that ring that sends him on a downward spiral of jealous rage.  

If Pelleas et Melisande can be referred to as a tragedy of passion, then it is clearly the passion of Golaud that is the mainspring of all the physical action in the opera and which finally destroys him.  He is a physical creature who distrusts the relationship between his brother and his wife because he is unable to discern its true nature.   Melisande  is clearly physically attracted to Golaud because when we first learn of her impending pregnancy (immediately following the scene in the vaults of the castle), she has displayed no prior symptoms of discomfort towards her relationship.  Yet the qualities which she is attracted  to in Pelleas are preceisely those that are absent in Golaud. But what exactly is it that sends him on a downward spiral of jealous rage?  Early on in the opera - in the letter that Genevieve reads to Arkel - we learn of the love that Golaud has shown to Yniold and Pelleas, so what has subverted this love?  The scene when he forces his young son, Yniold, to spy on Pelleas and Melisande together, hoping to catch them making love ("And the bed? Are they near the bed?"), is particularly unsettling.  And then, in front of his grandfather, we witness him dragging his pregnant  wife by her hair across the floor in the sign of the cross.  And then he proceeds to murder Pelleas in cold blood when he sees him kiss his wife.  It is the peculiar nature of the dramatic arc that is traced from the lost, stumbling Golaud who we see in the first scene to the murderous, psychotic Golaud that we see in the penultimate scene that makes me question whether all of these actions can solely be traced to Golaud's intrinsic character.  It is significant that he does not murder Melisande after fatally stabbing his brother.  Perhaps the realisation of his act has not only shocked him to his senses but has also returned him to a catatonic state similar to that in which we see him wandering in the first scene.  

One of the primary influences in Maeterlinck's mind when he was developing the character of Golaud was Shakespeare's Othello.  Like Othello, Golaud's descent into a murderous jealous rage appears to emerge at odds with his innately noble character.  Othello brutally strangles his young wife, Desdemona, in their bedroom, yet it is only as a result of Iago's intimate knowledge of his character that he succeeds in the terrible transformation of the Moor throughout the play. To recall Heraclitus, "man's character is his fate" and it is Melisnde's intimate knowledge of Golaud's character that enables her to exploit his weakness. Melisande clearly identifies Golaud's physical strength as well as his evident material security, but also recognises that he is prone to jealous insecurity, a character deficiency that she - apparently - exploits.

Arkel takes the form of a Greek chorus in this opera.  He comments on the action he observes and, perhaps by doing so, betrays Maeterlinck's real thoughts about these characters and the world they inhabit.   The burden that he must bear is a great one.  He observes at close quarters the mental disintegration of his grandson, Golaud.  He sees a world devoid of hope, of moral light and prays for a compassionate God.  There is a comment he makes in the penultimate scene regarding the mercy that God would exhibit if he could see into the hearts of men.  He makes a valiant attempt to engender real and profound change in this world.  Arkel states early on that it was his wish that his proposed marriage for Golaud - to a Princess Ursula - should bring an end not only to Golaud's personal grief in the wake of his bereavement but also an end to the wars which had taken their toll on the land and the people - but that Golaud did not wish it so.  Yet he is also a realist in that he recognises that, for Melisande's daughter at the conclusion of the opera, it is now "her turn" to be exposed to the darkness of this world.

The character of Golaud's and Pelleas's mother, Genevieve, perhaps represents what Golaud wishes for in his bride.  Genevieve is a deeply passive character, accepting of the reality of physical darkness in her surroundings as well as unquestioning of the moral decay that surrounds her.  

There is a recurring referrence in Pelleas et Melisande to "the truth".  In the last scene a tormented Golaud begs Melisande to tell him the truth before he dies.  In the penultimate scene Pelleas asks Melisande to tell him the truth about how she feels about him.  In the opening scene, Golaud asks Melisande about what happened to her.  In all cases, Melisande either avoids the question or refuses to answer.  For me, the most eternally puzzling part regarding this operas refers to its ambiguity.  It continually resists fixed interpretations about its characters.  It is impossible to describe the characters as entirely "good" or "bad".  It is all to easy to accuse Golaud as a force of evil, but is he provoked by Melisande or is he simply condemned by fate to act as he does and suffer for his actions.  The concept of "objective" truth is delusory, after all, and perhaps Maetelinck seems to be more interested in presenting the subjective truths as expressed by each of the characters about the world that they inhabit than in the imposition of a moral truth upon these characters.  Individual characters suffer as a result of either their own actions or others' actions but their sufferings do not affect their external surroundings.  Life goes on inexorably.  At one point, when Melisande first mentions her unhappiness to Golaud, he responds that "we should not expect joy every day".  And as Arkel points out in the last scene, the only certainty in life is suffering. 

Key to an understanding of Pelleas et Mlisande is an appreciation of the role that Fate plays in this world.  The deep sense of melancholy that suffuses the sound world of this work is emblematic of Maeterlinck's belief that our collective will is gradually resigned to Fate during our lifetime.  In our vanity, we may believe that we are masters of own individual fates, that we choose the path of our lives, but , in fact, we are subjects of unknown and irresistible forces that govern our lives.  There is an inextinguishable sense of nihilism in this opera.  We are told of how a famine has fallen upon the land or how the well which formerly healed the blind suddenly dried up.  We hear casual mention of peasants dying outside the castle walls.  But no explanation is given for these events nor is any sought.  Pelleas's fate is decided when, on informing his  
parents that he wishes to visit his ailing friend who is near death, he is instructed to remain by his own's father's side.  By remaining at home, he meets his step-brother's bride, Melisande, to whom he gradually becomes attached.  King Arkel makes arrangement for the marriage of his recently bereaved grandson, Golaud, to a Princess Ursula, to bring an end to the wars and famine that persists in his world.  But the proposed union comes to naught when Golaud marries Melissnde instead.  

Perhaps the most shocking thing about the world of Pelleas et Melisnde is the way in which accept their fate unquestioningly.  Is it easier to live in a world where you are unaware of the scale of the wrongs that are done to you or is an awareness of the evil around you an even greater burden to bear?  This opera has been called "the perfection of nihilism".  Unlike Tristan und Isolde, there is no transfiguration by death in this operas - in death, everything is lost and nothing is gained.  In his denudation of external events and emotions from this drama, Debussy succeeds in his articulation of an anguished expression of internalised pain against the backdrop of an emotional landscape bleached dry of the merest suggestion of compassion or empathy.

If a man's character is indeed his fate, then it it is in how we are gradually moulded by our physical environment - the world in which we live- that dictates our character and the personal qualities that we -subconsciously - choose to suppress or develop are exactly those that will win us approval by our peers.  This is why I view Golaud as a tragic character.  Whether we see his actions as the result of Melisande's subtle machinations or a direct expression of his character's will being subjected to Fate, the consequences of his actions see him irrevocably traumatised by the act of murdering his brother and the loss of his wife, for which he is personally responsible.  His actions may also have permanently alienated him from his son, Yniold.  

I find Pelleas et Melisande to be among the greatest of secular vocal masterpieces, comparable in achievement to Wagner's Parsifal and Mozart's Don Giovanni.  The music is among the most sensuously evocative ever written and ingeniously serves as an ever-developing commentary on Maeterlinck' s words.  It remains among the most fascinating and elusive works of art I know, deeply ambiguous in its shrouded meaning.  It is a truly wonderful listening experience that, in its sense of mystery, perhaps expresses much more about the utter wonder and magic that lies at the very heart of music than any other work I know.


"What shall we do - what shall we think - what shall we say?
Why, as the crocus does, on a March morning,
With just such shape and brightness; such fragility;
Such white and gold, and out of just such earth.
Or as the cloud does on the northeast wind -
Fluent and formless; or as the tree that withers.
What are we made of, strumpet, but of these?
Nothing.  We are the sum of all these accidents -
Compunded all our days of idiot trifles -
The this, the that, the other, and the next;
What x or y said, or old uncle thought;
Whether it rained or not, and at what hour;
Whether the pudding had two eggs orthree,
And those we loved were ladies ... Were they ladies?
And did they read the proper books, and simper
With proper persons, at the proper teas?
O Christ and God and all deciduous things -
Let us void out this nonsense and be healed.

"There is no doubt that we shall do, as always,
Just what the crocus does.  There is no doubt
Your Helen of Troy is all that she has seen -
All filth, all beauty, all honor and deceit.
The spider's web will hang in her bright mind,
The dead fly die there doubly; and the rat 
Find sewers to his liking.  She will walk
In such a world as this alone could give -
This of the moment, this mad world of mirrors
And of corrosive memory.  She will know
The lecheries of the cockroach and the worm,
The chemistry of the sunset, the foul seeds
Laid by the intellect in the simple heart ...
And knowing all these things, she will be she.

"She will be also the sunrise on the grassblade -
But pay no heed to that.  She will be also
The infinite tenderness of the voice of morning - 
But pay no heed to that.  She will be also
The grain of elmwood, and the ply of water,
Whirlings in sand and smoke, wind in the ferns,
The fixed bright eyes of dolls ... And this is all."

Prelude XXIX by Conrad Aiken

[fergus]

That was an excellent essay Paul; well done!

I do not have this work in my collection. What CD recommendations would you make if one were to invest?

[mcq]

Thank you, Fergus, for your kind words. Perhaps the most rewarding CD versions I own are Claudio Abbado's on DG and Bernard Haitink's on Naive. Indeed, it was Anne-Sophie von Otter's characterisation of Melisande in Haitink's version that first made me consider the possible duplicitousness of this strange character. Many other singers present her as a guileless ingenue but von Otter presents something subtler, more self-aware and knowing. Haitink also boasts a wonderful Golaud in Laurent Naouri, perhaps the finest modern day performer of this role since Jose van Dam. The Pelleas is lieder specialist Wolfgang Holzmair who sings quite beautifully throughout. As you would expect from Haitink (who also provided us with benchmark versions of the orchestral works with the Concergebouw Orchestra), the conducting is a masterclass in refined understatement, and really repays close listening. Abbado's version is also superb,more dramatic than Haitink's and just as well cast with the greatest Golaud of thm all, Jose van Dam, in imperious form. The casting of Melisande, Maria Ewing, was a surprising choice, but Abbado draws out a charming performance from her. I also enjoy Karajan's and Dutoit's excellent versions but do not find them as penetrating as Haitink's or Abbado's. On DVD, there is a quite superb version conducted by John Eliot Gardiner which, I believe, also appeared on a long-deleted Erato recording (which demands reissue). Gardiner produces a subtle, rewarding reading which, like the Haitink version, is continually illuminating. He also has the luxury of casting van Dam as Golaud. He has returned to this work in recent years and I hope we'll see a recording released on his SDG label. Also worthy of mention is Pierre Boulez's version on a DG DVD from his time with the Welsh Opera. The cast is certainly not as starry as Abbado's, but Boulez produces a deeply considered, very rewarding performance. His conducting is exemplary for his sense of clarity and crispness. Most recently, I've been enjoying another DVD performance (on Naive) conducted by the young Philippe Jordan. The Pelleas cast here, Stephane Degout, is particularly noteworthy in a striking stage production by Robert Wilson that was inspired by Japanese Noh theatre. (Wilson also developed excellent productions for Gardiner's performances of Orfeo et Eurydice and Alceste, both of which are available on EMI DVDs.)

[Seán]

Lovely thread. I do not have any recordings of Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande but now you have stimulated my interest in this piece, I must get a copy of the Abbado or Haitink recordings, thanks Paul..

[Jose Echenique]

I agree with Paul, the Haitink version with Anne Sofie von Otter is quite simply stunning. I´m not as happy with the Abbado because of Maria Ewing. She was an excellent singing actress (she is married to Sir Peter Hall of the Royal Shakespeare Company), but the voice itself was not especially beautiful. For an alternative I´m very fond of the Karajan version with Frederica von Stade, Richard Stilwell and Jose van Dam, surely the most gorgeously sung Pélleas ever, and Karajan though luxuriant, is sensitive to the score.

[fergus]

Thank you Paul and Pepe for your recommendations.....Haitink definitely seems to be top of the heap on this one!

[mcq]

Yes, Haitink's version is a marvel, one of the greatest of all versions of this masterpiece, and von Otter's performance is brave, insightful, and one that forced me to completely re-evaluate this character's motives.  Haitink also produced a quite superb version of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust (another work I dearly love), recorded live in 1999 - released belatedly in 2011 by Challenge Classics - and which shares many of the same virtues of clarity, insight and understated drama as his version of Pelleas.

As Jose pointed out, Karajan's is also very good.  Karajan is one of those conductors who was over-praised in his lifetime, and has become rather under-appreciated in recent years.  He recorded the same repertore far too often and his homogenised approach to string textures (to the detriment of his woodwinds and brass) obscured inner detail but he could be very, very good.  His version of Pelleas is one such instance, a masterly recording of a difficult score.

The one version I'm looking forward to is Gardiner's.  His 1987 recording with the Chorus and Orchestra of the Lyon Opera (available on an Arthaus DVD) lingers on in the memory.  The stage production was somewhat controversial but the performance, in my opinion, is really something special.  The great Jose van Dam gives us one of the great performances of Golaud, tormented with  jealous rage that destroys him as much as as it does those around him.  Colette Alliot-Lugaz also sung the role of Melisande in Dutoit's fine version and Francois Le Roux was the Pelleas in Abbado's version.  All contribute superb performances and Gardiner's conducting is a wonder of insight and clarity. He was invited to the Opera Comique in Paris (where it was originally premiered in 1903) to perform it in 2010 and he directed another performance at last year's Proms.  Hopefully he'll agree to its release on his SDG label.

[Jose Echenique]

< Haitink also produced a quite superb version of Berlioz's La Damnation de Faust (another work I dearly love), recorded live in 1999 - released belatedly in 2011 by Challenge Classics - and which shares many of the same virtues of clarity, insight and understated drama as his version of Pelleas.>

Oh yes Paul, it´s tremendously exciting, and the playing of the superb Radio Netherlands Philharmonic is glorious. This is one of the best Damnations on records, released in support of the orchestra which the Congress in the Hague wanted to disband.

[mcq]

Perhaps I'm off-topic here but, on the subject of Haitink, I really find it hard to believe that a conductor of his stature does not have a regular recording contact with any of the major labels.  If it wasn't for in-house orchestra labels like LSO Live and CSO Live, we would be denied many of his performances.  I also own a superb version of Wagner's Parsifal that he conducted at the Zurich Opera House in 2007 (released on a DG DVD) that boasts wonderful performances from Christopher Ventris as Parsifal and Michael Volle as Amfortas.  Haitink is by no means  a Wagner specialist but the sounds he conjures up from the Zurich players are quite something.  The production does divide a lot of people, however, and I think that the performance would benefit immensely from being released as a CD set.

[Seán]

I must get a copy of Haitink's first and perhaps follow up with HvK's too.