We have two new favorable reviews of Opera as Opera to tell you about. In The Boston Musical Intelligencer (https://www.classical-scene.com/2019/02/10/opera-cure), Ralph Locke has written an uncommonly thorough, thoughtful, and balanced piece, replete with helpful linked references. And in the Swedish Opera (not to be confused with the UK magazine in which Stephen Hastings reviewed the book), Nils-Göran Olve has contributed another very well-considered article. It’s in Swedish, but we hear that Mr. Olve will soon be heard on the topic in an English venue. After this long string of positive reviews, I must also report that we’ve received our first slam—not quite the “hatchet job” it was termed by a forewarning friend, but certainly negative. It comes in Opera News from Fred Cohn, a writer whose work I have generally enjoyed. He does concede a virtue or two (at least he credits me with “a great ear”), but the length and detail of several sections, which many reviewers and readers have greeted enthusiastically and some as a mixed blessing, Cohn finds “infuriating.” He also seems bothered by the book’s focus on problematics. His piece does contain a first, though: my writing has never before been called “reactionary.” And to today’s topic:

  Claude Debussy’s ever-beckoning Pelléas et Mélisande returned to the Met repertoire on January 15, in the production directed by Sir Jonathan Miller that was first mounted in 1995. This wasn’t, finally, an adequate representation of the work, but it had its positive aspects, and even held out one potentially promising prospect. To those elements first. Although Ferruccio Furlanetto’s bass occasionally turns unsteady on sustained upper notes these days, it is still a satisfyingly large, well-seated voice (I perked right up at “Je n’en dis rien“—the performance was underway!), and he is still a performer who commands the stage without jumping through any hoops to do so. He was that rare thing, a consistently interesting Arkel, and in Act V contributed stretches of shaded mezza-voce singing that constituted the evening’s most distinguished vocalism. After a dullish start, Kyle Ketelson gradually established himself as Golaud, his attractive bass-baritone rising to the challenges of the terrible later scenes. And though I much prefer a physically appropriate grown-up in the role of Yniold, for both vocal and dramatic reasons (the only really persuasive performance of the part I’ve seen was that of the young Teresa Stratas), A. Jesse Shopflocher, singing with clear tone and good intonation, was musically and linguistically on top of his assignment.

But: if we have decided to do an opera called Pelléas et Mélisande, it’s incumbent on us to have on hand a singing actor of the unusual sort who can hold our attention as Pelléas, and, even more importantly, another who can do the same as Mélisande. A general giftedness, a general kind of appeal, is not enough. Neither of these title roles is demanding in terms of compass or tessitura, which is why, although the parts are designated as tenor and soprano, it is sometimes praticable to cast a baritone as Pelléas and a mezzo-soprano as Mélisande. But what is absolutely necessary is that both voices be capable of sharp declamation in their lower ranges—”sharp” in actual verbal clarity, and in inflectional nuance as well. With a couple of relatively brief exceptions (Golaud’s jealous rage, then bits of his remorse; the lovers’ climactic ecstasy), the characters express themselves in emotionally restrained manner, registering their meanings in small but distinct inflections in the lower octaves of their ranges. While Pelléas is quite correctly cited as the most successful of all the operas yet written that have tried to derive their vocal settings directly from the rhythms, accents, and intervallic moves of its language as spoken, Debussy, responding to the psychological atmosphere of Maeterlinck’s play (see below), created not a web of “natural” or even highly imaginative line readings, but rather its musical analogue. Thus, many stretches of dialogue actually flatten out the expected rise and fall of the normal speech patterns, subtly displace their accents, and “unnaturally” regularize their rhythms, all in a range that is lower and narrower than the operatic custom, yet still a fifth to an octave above speaking range, and with the color span of the cultivated singing voice.