Longborough delivers haunting interpretation of Debussy's only opera
If there can be no beloved Wagner this season at Longborough, Pelléas and Mélisande is as close as it is going to get.
In a hostile, otherworldly environment, disconnected from the planet earth most of us inhabit, a frightened girl is confronted by an unsupportive man. “Ne reculez pas! Ne reculez pas!”, “Don’t back down!” she intones. But he has backed down. And she bursts into tears.
Welcome to this week’s bizarre episode of Prime Minister’s Questions, a weekly Westminster pot-boiler operetta starring weepy Mélisande Reeves, and abusive Golaud Starmer, who has without a by your leave blown a £5bn hole in the crown of her vaunted benefits’ cuts. Essential for balancing the books. That policy now glimmers, abandoned at the bottom of a lake.
As a scene-setter the Commons debacle more than matches the opening of Claude Debussy’s Pelléas and Mélisande when Golaud, Pelléas’ half-brother, encounters the weeping Mélisande by a river in a dark forest and is told in no uncertain terms when he approaches, “Ne me touchez pas! Ne me touchez pas!” - “Don’t touch me!”
Opera mirrors life’s motley. Abuse in The House of Commons and the kingdom of Allemond alike. Mélisande, too has lost a crown. Although it is never explained why. But as the next act of the Reeves/Starmer drama is uncertain, unlike Debussy’s 1902 opera, I’ll stick with Debussy.
And Longborough’s enthralling, enigmatic production delivered by director Jenny Ogilvie is as haunting an interpretation of the French composer’s groundbreaking, only opera as I’ve encountered.
Shock horror! As I settled into Longborough’s comfy seats – picked up on the cheap from a Royal Opera House skip – I cast an eye towards the stage. Someone had apparently stolen the set. A dark, empty void stared back at the audience. Thieves had overlooked a dangling yellow lightbulb and other ancillary electrical gear. But that was it. Had management noticed? Should I tell them?
A grey, back wall with stairs, niches and openings at various levels was the sole remaining scenery. The villains had forgotten their IKEA spanners. Too difficult to dismantle.
That void was Designer Max Jones’ stroke of genius. Debussy’s music was allowed to set the scene. Within seconds of the opening soft phrases, strings and woodwind, the audience’s imagination had taken over.
Most productions feature a forest; a castle; a grotto; the well of the blind; pools. One I saw found Mélisande strapped to a couch, a mental patient. But waving forests simply get in the way.
Debussy’s only opera was in preparation for ten years. It is something of a Janus of a work as it looks back to the 19th century, especially the influence of Wagner, and points the way to the 20th.
And without a sense of mystery, it is nothing. The opera is based on a play by Flemish playwright, Maurice Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck, no slouch, winning the Nobel prize for Literature in 2011, was a Symbolist. Pelléas and Mélisande caught Debussy’s imagination. He used Maeterlinck’s words – with only minor modification – and cut out some passages. The libretto is unadulterated Maeterlinck.
Where Debussy departed from the formulaic norm was to let the words flow from the music. There are no da capo arias conforming to received, well known structures. Nowhere a set piece chorus. The bel canto tradition, based on showcasing spectacular voices, is well and truly ditched. Declarations of love are pronounced in hushed tones.
Wagner had broken with many operatic traditions but replaced them with his own version of voice spectacle. The nearest Wagner parallel to Pelléas is Parsifal. Setting a story in a mystical past and allowing imagination room to interpret. Richard Strauss, impressed by Pelléas was to take the same approach to the libretto in his 1905 Salome, using a text by Oscar Wilde. But it was Debussy who truly shattered the mould.
The story of the mysterious Kingdom of Allemond.
Act I
We never know where we are, or in what time. Prince Golaud, lost while out hunting, stumbles upon a beautiful young girl, frightened and weeping by a fountain. She refuses to tell him anything beyond her name, Mélisande. Gripe. Why did Anisha Fields, Longborough’s costume designer, kit Golaud out in a double-breasted jacket? We’re meant to believe he's hunting in a forest. Not wandering down The Kings Road. He needs at least a Barbour.
Hooded, abandoned and distraught, Mélisande is properly kitted out as damaged goods. She has suffered severe trauma and the read across from Ogilvie’s interpretation is she is the victim of sexual abuse. A crown which she has thrown into the water, still shimmers, is within reach, but Golaud’s offer to recover it is rejected. Mélisande is for moving on.
We never know what that crown represents. Everyone in the audience lets their mind run riot, in different directions. Mélisande’s simple opening line, “Ne me toucher pas! Ne me toucher pas!” strikes powerful chords in today’s online, abusive world.
Mélisande was sung by Ukrainian soprano Kateryna Kasper. The character is enigmatic. Let’s face it, being discovered in a forest, marrying a prince, falling in love with his half-brother, watching him knifed in front of, then giving birth to a daughter only to die having lost your mind, requires of Kasper a thespian tour de force.
Ophelia had it easy by comparison, floating gently, if not merrily, down a stream. Kasper was the ideal Mélisande. A mistress of concealment. And always a character of substance. It’s a mistake to portray Mélisande as a Barbie victim. Ogilvie and Kasper got the role pitch perfect.
She reluctantly agrees to go with Golaud. The marriage to Golaud, against the family wishes – he’s meant to marry the daughter of a warring clan to secure a peace – is skated over. Perhaps a Debussy cut in Maeterlinck’s narrative.
Spool on six months. In his castle, King Arkel of Allemond, Golaud’s grandfather, learns of the marriage to Mélisande.
Arkel, British Bass, Julian Close, had a voice that seemed to come from the centre of the earth. The most thoughtful character of the work – he holds the piece together dramatically – a sort of Wotan figure, rationalising and trying to come to terms with his collapsing kingdom.
Golaud fears to return home, knowing that a political alliance would have pleased grandad better. If Golaud is to return, a light should be shone out to sea from the battlements signifying he and Mélisande are welcome. Else, they shall sail on – forever. The light is lit.
Golaud’s half-brother, Pelléas, asks permission to leave the castle, to visit a friend who is dying but is refused. He must stay with his own dying father – who we never meet – and greet his half-brother and new bride.
Golaud and Pelléas’ mother Geneviève introduces Mélisande to the kingdom, Allemond and to Pelléas, who she asks to keep a benevolent eye on her. Fatal error!
Scene changes were mostly effected by the careful positioning of characters onstage, then illuminating the action. Lighting Director, Peter Small achieved great narrative flow.
Act II
Pelléas and Mélisande are by a well in the forest. Cue metal foil water. Minimalist, but perfectly sufficient. Mélisande is playing with a ring Golaud gave her, throwing it high into the air. As the clock chimes noon, the ring falls into the water. At exactly the same moment, Golaud is thrown from his horse while out hunting.
Golaud was Canadian Italian baritone Brett Polegato. He never let his Golaud character settle. Tender, suspicious, jealous, violent, by turns. The Polegato Golaud was on perma-boil.
When Mélisande comes to him he takes her hand and notices her ring is lost. How? Scared, she lies, telling him she lost it in a sea-cave. Although it is night, Golaud insists she goes to look for it, accompanied by Pelléas.
Pelléas and Mélisande enter the sea-cave. Mélisande needs to be able to describe the spot to Golaud to sound convincing.
Pelléas was sung by Karim Sulayman, a Lebanese American tenor, with a voice some fellow members of the audience thought too lightweight. He’s an impossible dreamer. Needs to be distinguished from his half-brother. I thought it perfectly sufficient, but I was in Row 3 of the stalls.
At that moment the moon emerges from behind a cloud, revealing three beggars asleep just inside. This is a turning point for Mélisande and the audience. There is something rotten in the state of Allemond. People are starving. The castle – authority? – is a crumbling ruin, the well that is meant to cure the blind doesn’t work. Arkel is blind. And probably hospital waiting lists have spiralled out of control.
There is a sense, as there was in fin de siècle Europe, that the current established political order is running out of steam and time.
Act III
Mélisande is in a castle tower, brushing her hair. Pelléas arrives below and tells her he is leaving. This is the Rapunzel moment. He tangles himself in her hair. Hair symbolic of a sexual encounter. But when Golaud catches them, he tells them both off for behaving like children. Conveniently masking the reality of his suspicions.
Furious, Golaud takes Pelléas to a cave below the castle where it is dark and airless. He threatens. Warns Pelléas to stay away from Mélisande who is now pregnant and delicate. But then tempers the threat with an instruction not to let her notice his change in behaviour.
Golaud questions his son Yniold about Pelléas and Mélisande but the small boy knows nothing. Golaud holds him up to the window to spy on the two, but Yniold only sees them sitting and staring, not even talking. Looking at the light. Is that a metaphor for something more guilty? Golaud’s jealous fantasies are stirred.
The boy, of Golaud’s first marriage, sung by soprano Nia Coleman – a short-trouser role – is terrified. His father’s treatment verges on abuse. Yniold simply does not understand what he is seeing.
Act IV
Arkel announces Pelléas’s father is now better, so he prepares to leave, asking Mélisande to meet him one last time by the well. Arkel tries to reassure Mélisande that she may yet be happy in Allemond, but Golaud interrupts and becomes angry with her, throwing her violently to the ground. Pulling her one way, then the other with the hair which had previously smothered Pelléas. It was a spine-chilling moment.
Pelléas and Mélisande meet by the well. For the first time they admit to their love and kiss. But Golaud is waiting in the dark, at the end of their shadows, and stabs Pelléas, before pursuing a fleeing Mélisande.
Act V
Mélisande has given birth to a daughter but is dying. Golaud visits her and tries to discover the truth of her relationship with Pelléas. She innocently confesses that she loved him. But remains silent as to whether or not the relationship was consummated. Golaud is tormented. She dies.
Arkel holds Mélisande’s baby in his arms. “It must live now, in her place. It is the turn of the poor little one.” And so, spools drama down the generations.
Conductor, Anthony Negus was in his element. If there can be no beloved Wagner this season at Longborough, Pelléas and Mélisande is as close as it is going to get. The ethereal quality of Debussy’s score was his sound world. To get close to Negus’ inspiring enthusiasm for this opera, have a listen to the house podcast. The Longborough Festival Orchestra captured every nuanced phrase.
At curtain call, a standing ovation. Negus, who is super cool, led the cast forward to take a bow one more time and stole a covert glance at his watch. Mustn’t keep the audience from the Moreton-in-Marsh train to Paddington. Time to bustle offstage. A benevolent conductor in every sense of the word.
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