I believe that Pelléas et Mélisande is most completely understood through awareness of the mystical sensibility, and most particularly with respect to Mélisande—everything falls into place around her occult motivation. As I commented a couple of posts ago with respect to the salvation of Marguerite in Faust, there really isn’t any way to satisfy the emotional life of any work without honoring its belief system. Our own beliefs, whether as receptors or interpreters, must be relinquished for the duration; else, we cannot enter the world of the work. And what does that imply about how Pelléas should be played and produced? For one thing, it implies great clarity, keen definition. I mentioned earlier that despite the fact that we call Pelléas a Symbolist work, I do not think visual symbolization is useful in approaching it. Symons long ago noted that “All art hates the vague; not the mysterious, but the vague, two opposites very commonly confused,” and that “the artist who is also a mystic hates the vague with a more profound hatred than any other artist.” He speaks, accurately, of the extraordinary precision of Maeterlinck’s text. He was writing before Debussy had set it, but Debussy mysteriously (for he was no mystic himself) found the perfect response to it. His orchestral writing, made scenically and gesturally eloquent with its unprecedented combination of harmonic and instrumental color, its shifting rhythms, subtle motivic patterns, and uncanny descriptions of events large and small, external and internal, evokes for us both the physical and psychological (or, if you will, spiritual) surround of the drama. Within this surround, his setting of the dialogue is “realistic” (his own term), and asks to be projected with the utmost clarity, exactitude, and strength of both intent and execution—qualities that must also inform the physical behavior of the performers. No moment must be left in generalized (“vague”) form. And while the physical settings may permit of some stylistic treatment (“Impressionist” would be the most obvious inclination), their job is to show us the world of this life, of consciousness, and thus of the impact of its several distinct locales on the moods and actions of the characters. Objects and vistas must be recognizably themselves, and recognizably medieval (updating, or the futile search for “timelessness” through anonymity, is catastrophic.)
In any case, that’s what I think.
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A tiny bibliography of works referenced or directly drawn on in the above:
Symons, Arthur: The Symbolist Movement in Literature, Revised Edition, 1919, reissued with Introduction by Richard Ellmann, Dutton & Co., 1958
Markale, Jean: Montségur and the Mystery of the Cathars, Jon Graham, trans., Inner Traditions, Rochester, Vt., 2003, originally published by Éditions Pygmalion/Gérard Watelet, Paris, 1986
Boulez, Pierre: “Pelléas Reflected”: Essay accompanying Columbia M3 30119, 1969
Woolfe, Zachary: “A Milestone at the Metropolitan Opera,” New York Times, Jan. 20, 2019
Osborne, Conrad L.: “Out of Darkness,” Opera News, Mar. 4, 1978
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NEXT TIME: On Friday, March 1, I will post the first of what will undoubtedly be two installments on the complete recordings of Fyodor Chaliapin, as recently released by Marston.
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