DVD review: Pelléas et Mélisande 1992 WNO Boulez

Deutsche Grammophon

Mélisande: Alison Hagley
Pelléas: Neil Archer
Golaud: Donald Maxwell
Arkel: Kenneth Cox

Director: Peter Stein
Conductor: Pierre Boulez

Welsh National Opera

This production was important in its time and received good reviews and continues to be highly regarded amongst lovers of this most recherche score. I thought I better check it out.

Alison Hagley's Mélisande is very youthful and natural both vocally and dramatically, and she gives a pleasingly simple, innocent and other worldly performance. The voice is attractive, fragile, sweet and slightly brittle sounding in climaxes and so is in some ways ideal. The other clear stand out is Kenneth Cox's wonderfully orotund Arkel, absolutely solid and ripe throughout his range. Wonderful singing. Neil Archer (Pelléas) and Donald Maxwell (Golaud) both sing their music very respectably indeed, one can hardly complain, but neither is very dramatically committed which is particularly hard to take with so many close ups.

Peter Stein's production is a decent staging if you like your productions vanilla and your singers to be accurate rather than having strong personalities of their own. The costumes strongly suggest the late 19th century, as Golaud looks like Debussy and Pelléas like Oscar Wilde, but it obviously remains a fantasy setting with set designs that are slightly abstract, shadowy and plain but recognisably what is written in the score. It's not at all interventionist, and doesn't try to explain or elucidate the symbolism or elliptical drama too much which is fine, but don't expect any easy insights. It basically works well, but didn't draw me in that much, though I think this also might have been to do with the conducting.

Though I have heard Boulez in plenty of Second Viennese stuff and contemporary music, surprisingly this is the first time I have ever heard him conduct something tonal that wasn't by Stravinsky (a composer for whom his conducting was made). His approach here is icy and precise, but there's no bouquet, no aroma, no seduction, not enough sickness, and though it's very clear that this is what he wants, in this piece it just seems inappropriate to me. He also can't sustain a line or anything slow which is a bit of a problem in this score. Maybe some will like his absolute eschewal of any sentimentality, but for me he also strips the piece of half of its genuine sentiment and atmosphere too.

Something to bear in mind: the filming is oddly antiquated considering this was filmed in 1992. There's a lot of grainyness and bright colours bleed when the camera moves quickly.

P.S. Most gratuitous use of animals ever award goes to this production where a live sheep is onstage for all of four seconds for Yniold's solo scene. Great.

Old news: an indulgence

If you'll not mind the indulgence, I want to post a year old review, referenced in the last post, which never made it into print. It's clumsily written, but my admiration comes across. I remain completely in awe of the achievement of these students:

Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande is an operatic experience quite unlike any other, truly Sui generis, the antithesis of the clichées of fat ladies, histrionics and melodrama that forms the basis of so much standard operatic fare. It is one of the most beautiful of all operatic scores, possessing a uniquely rarefied air, a subtlety of scoring, pungency of harmony and delicacy of atmosphere of an order and type that is without real precedent (pace Parsifal) or true successor (pace Ravel) in the operatic repertoire.

The staging was a bold one - monocrome hues of blue and grey lit a set redolent of a decaying urban wasteland, with costumes hinting at a similarly grim setting - some kind of terrifyingly beautiful dystopian future, a civilisation at its nadir. The various set items were completely static and unchanging throughout the opera which served to superbly illustrate the many common threads, allusions and portents that riddle the plot - the bed of passion becomes the sick bed, the well becomes the stagnant pool. The characters drifted listlessly through the haze in almost agonising stillness in the first half, a fearful coolness and pall of sickness veiling their actions, with the deeply symbolic plot being revealed in the harshest and most unsettling way. At first the starkness of the cold dim lighting and industrial set seemed at complete odds with Debussy's sumptuous music but it actually served to highlight and strengthen the human interactions - the faces, hair and hands of the cast taking on an almost heightened softness and luminosity such that the tiniest actions took on the greatest expression and emotion.

The second half contains the emotional core of the opera and was a welcome respite after the first half, the subtle delicacy of the sung text and orchestral texture elevated to heights of immense emotion and drama. A particular highlight was the tower scene, perhaps the finest moment in the opera, here almost unbearably intimate and tender, so beautifully sensual and understated in its eroticism - truly superb singing, acting and directing on show here.

The cast was extremely strong, not just in their singing abilities but also in their acting. Gwilym Bowen's Pelléas, the ineffectual and effeminate non-hero of the opera was wonderfully characterised, Bowen singing with great sensitivity throughout. Choosing to cast Pelleas as a light lyric tenor was an inspired choice: this coupled with the bleakness of the production brilliantly accentuated the character's youthful ardour and hapless naivity.

Golaud's tortured outbursts were wonderfully handled by Christopher Dollins, whose relationship with Louise Kemeny's Melisande had real substance. Kemeny sang beautifully throughout, again characterising the youthful Melisande's flitting lyricism and ineffectualness with sophisticated style. Arkel's elliptical orations were delivered with powerful gravitas by Christopher Law and Josephine Stevenson's Yniold was puckish and charming.

Debussy's fragrant tissues of sound were conjured with great skill and exactitude by conductor Christopher Stark with the orchestra he had assembled allowing the intoxicating perfume of orchestral colours to bloom, hum and ripple. The orchestral playing was uniformly of a very high standard, with wonderful points of colour and a real efficacy on the later nights.