If you are among the not-terribly-silent majority that sees opera as a three-and-a-half-hour ordeal consisting of people in funny costumes screaming at each other, well, I can sympathize. Despite listening to and playing classical music for most of my life, and try as I might, for the longest time I could never quite *get* opera. Sure, I could get swept up by a beautiful aria, but as a whole, opera seemed to me a mess of hackneyed plots, bad acting, and overblown, bombastic music. It seemed that way, that is, until I encountered Claude Debussy’s haunting and ravishingly beautiful Pelléas et Mélisande in an undergraduate seminar on the French post-romantic/impressionist/symbolist composer. I’ve since never looked at opera the same way. Pelléas is now on stage at The Four Seasons Centre in Toronto in a production by the Canadian Opera Company, and I’ve had my ticket in hand for months.
Two Saturdays ago, in the University of Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre, I joined about 130 opera stalwarts for “Letting Your Hair Down with Pelléas and Mélisande“1, the latest in the Canadian Opera Company’s excellent Opera Exchange series. About half way through his introductory talk on the symbolist movement, U of T theatre Ph.D candidate Leslie Barcza told us that Pelléas et Mélisande “works best when the audience will meet it on its own terms,” and indeed most of the participants seemed to agree that Pelléas works against many of the conventions of opera (there are no real arias in the opera; the climactic declaration of love occurs with a whisper instead of a bang, etc.). Maybe that’s why I liked it immediately when I first saw it (alas, on video).
Very briefly, the plot (c/o the COC’s Pelléas page):
Prince Golaud discovers the mysterious Mélisande lost in the forest near his castle. Enchanted, he marries her and brings her to [the bleak kingdom of Allemonde ruled by his grandfather Arkel]. There she is drawn to Pelléas, Golaud’s half-brother, and in time the two fall dangerously in love.
Sounds like another silly operatic story of love and betrayal? Not quite.
The symbolists delighted in obscurity and ambiguity, concealed truths and half-told stories2. According to the next speaker, Katherine Bergeron3, Dean of the College and Professor of Music at Brown University, Pelléas is no exception. Her brilliant talk focused on the idea of the opera as “modernist theatre of the misheard”, where Mélisande and Golaud seem to be speaking in “parallel discourses” that never come together. Mélisande, identified with nature and light, seems perfectly inscrutable to Golaud’s royal family who live amid the violence and rot that haunt Allemonde. How this theme is realized in the music itself is part of Debussy’s genius: the scales, chords, keys, and musical style of Mélisande’s part utterly clash with those of the jealous and violent Golaud, creating an effect not unlike the dialogue of misunderstanding and cross-purposes of Beckett.
A hackneyed plot, with overblown music, this is not. If you crave the subtlety and ambiguity that film does so well, but are disappointed by other operas, maybe Pelléas is for you. Maybe you might then take a second look at other operas (Start with Strauss’ Elektra, and then if you’re feeling adventurous, Berg’s Wozzeck or Britten’s Peter Grimes).
I haven’t seen the COC’s Pelléas yet, but according to Professor Bergeron, it’s fantastic. My tickets are for this Thursday. See you there?
2: They worshiped Poe. Obviously.
3: Disclosure: Professor Bergeron taught the incredible Debussy seminar that introduced me to Pelléas in the first place.
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