Pelléas et Mélisande (Pelléas and Mélisande) is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist play of the same name. It premiered at the Salle Favart in Paris by the Opéra-Comique on 30 April 1902; Jean Périer was Pelléas and Mary Garden was Mélisande, conducted by André Messager, who was instrumental in getting the Opéra-Comique to stage the work. It is the only opera Debussy ever completed.

The plot concerns a love triangle. Prince Golaud finds Mélisande, a mysterious young woman, lost in a forest. He marries her and brings her back to the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel of Allemonde. Here Mélisande becomes increasingly attached to Golaud's younger half-brother Pelléas, arousing Golaud's jealousy. Golaud goes to excessive lengths to find out the truth about Pelléas and Mélisande's relationship, even forcing his own child, Yniold, to spy on the couple. Pelléas decides to leave the castle but arranges to meet Mélisande one last time and the two finally confess their love for one another. Golaud, who has been eavesdropping, rushes out and kills Pelléas. Mélisande dies shortly after, having given birth to a daughter, with Golaud still begging her to tell him "the truth."

Pelléas et Mélisande has remained regularly staged and recorded throughout the 20th and into the 21st century.

Composition history

Debussy's ideal of opera Looking back in 1902, Debussy explained the protracted genesis of his only finished opera: "For a long time I had been striving to write music for the theatre, but the form in which I wanted it to be was so unusual that after several attempts I had given up on the idea."Quoted in There were many false starts before Pelléas et Mélisande. In the 1880s the young composer had toyed with several opera projects (Diane au Bois, Axël) before accepting a libretto on the theme of El Cid, entitled Rodrigue et Chimène, from the poet and Wagner aficionado Catulle Mendès.

At this point, Debussy too was a devotee of Wagner's music, but—eager to please his father—he was probably more swayed by Mendès' promise of a performance at the Paris Opéra and the money and reputation this would bring. Mendès' libretto, with its conventional plot, offered rather less encouragement to his creative abilities.Claude Samuel, booklet notes to Kent Nagano's recording of Rodrigue et Chimène (Erato Records, 1995) p. 12 In the words of critic Victor Lederer, "Desperate to sink his teeth into a project of substance, the young composer accepted the type of old-fashioned libretto he dreaded, filled with howlers and lusty choruses of soldiers calling for wine."Victor Lederer, p. 42 Debussy's letters and conversations with friends reveal his increasing frustration with the Mendès libretto, and the composer's enthusiasm for the Wagnerian aesthetic was also waning. In a letter of January 1892, he wrote, "My life is hardship and misery thanks to this opera. Everything about it is wrong for me." And to Paul Dukas, he confessed that Rodrigue was "totally at odds with all that I dream about, demanding a type of music that is alien to me."Claude Samuel pp.12–13

Debussy was already formulating a new conception of opera. In a letter to Ernest Guiraud in 1890 he wrote: "The ideal would be two associated dreams. No time, no place. No big scene [...] Music in opera is far too predominant. Too much singing and the musical settings are too cumbersome [...] My idea is of a short libretto with mobile scenes. No discussion or arguments between the characters whom I see at the mercy of life or destiny."Quoted in Viking, p. 247 It was only when Debussy discovered the new symbolist plays of Maurice Maeterlinck that he found a form of drama that answered his ideal requirements for a libretto.

Finding the right libretto

Maeterlinck's plays were tremendously popular with the avant-garde in the Paris of the 1890s. They were anti-naturalistic in content and style, forsaking external drama for a symbolic expression of the inner life of the characters.The Reader's Encyclopedia, ed. Benet (1967 edition) p. 618 Debussy had seen a production of Maeterlinck's first play La princesse Maleine and, in 1891, he applied for permission to set it but Maeterlinck had already promised it to Vincent d'Indy.

Debussy's interest shifted to Pelléas et Mélisande, which he had read some time between its publication in May 1892 and its first performance at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens on 17 May 1893, which he attended.Richard Langham Smith: "Pelléas et Mélisande", Grove Music Online ed. L. Macy (Accessed January 21, 2009), (subscription access) Pelléas was a work that fascinated many other musicians of the time: both Gabriel Fauré and Jean Sibelius composed incidental music for the play, and Arnold Schoenberg wrote a tone poem on the theme. Debussy found in it the ideal opera libretto for which he had been searching. In a 1902 article, "Pourquoi j'ai écrit Pelléas" (Why I wrote Pelléas), Debussy explained the appeal of the work: "The drama of Pelléas which, despite its dream-like atmosphere, contains far more humanity than those so-called 'real-life documents', seemed to suit my intentions admirably. In it there is an evocative language whose sensitivity could be extended into music and into the orchestral backcloth."

Debussy abandoned work on Rodrigue and Chimène and he approached Maeterlinck in August 1893 via his friend, the poet Henri de Régnier for permission to set Pelléas. By the time Maeterlinck granted it Debussy had already started work on the love scene in act 4, a first version of which was completed in draft by early September. In November, Debussy made a trip to Belgium, where he played excerpts from his work in progress to the famous violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in Brussels before visiting Maeterlinck at his home in Ghent. Debussy described the playwright as being initially as shy as a "girl meeting an eligible young man", but the two soon warmed to each other. Maeterlinck authorised Debussy to make whatever cuts in the play he wanted. He also admitted to the composer that he knew nothing about music.

Composition Debussy decided to remove four scenes from the play (act 1 scene 1, act 2 scene 4, act 3 scene 1, act 5 scene 1), significantly reducing the role of the serving-women to one silent appearance in the last act. He also cut back on the elaborate descriptions that Maeterlinck was fond of. Debussy's method of composition was fairly systematic; he worked on only one act at a time but not necessarily in chronological order. The first scene that he wrote was act 4 scene 4, the climactic love scene between Pelléas and Mélisande.

Debussy finished the short score of the opera (without detailed orchestration) on 17 August 1895. He did not go on to produce the full score needed for rehearsals until the Opéra-Comique accepted the work in 1898. At this point he added the full orchestration, finished the vocal score, and made several revisions. It is this version that went into rehearsals in January 1902.

Putting Pelléas on stage

Finding a venue Debussy spent years trying to find a suitable venue for the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande, realising he would have difficulties getting such an innovative work staged. As he confided to his friend Camille Mauclair in 1895: "It is no slight work. I should like to find a place for it, but you know I am badly received everywhere." He told Mauclair that he had contemplated asking the wealthy aesthete Robert de Montesquiou to have it performed at his Pavillon des Muses, but nothing came of this. Meanwhile, Debussy refused all requests for permission to present extracts from the opera in concert. He wrote: "if this work has any merit, it is above all in the connection between its scenic and musical movement".

The composer and conductor André Messager was a great admirer of Debussy's music and had heard him play extracts from the opera. When Messager became chief conductor of the Opéra-Comique theatre in 1898, his enthusiastic recommendations prompted Albert Carré, the head of the opera house, to visit Debussy and hear the work played on the piano at two sessions, in May 1898 and April 1901. On the strength of this, Carré accepted the work for the Opéra-Comique and on 3 May 1901 gave Debussy a written promise to perform the opera the following season.

Conflict over casting Mélisande

Maeterlinck wanted the role of Mélisande to go to his longtime companion Georgette Leblanc, who later claimed that Debussy had had several rehearsals with her and was "thrilled with my interpretation". However, she was persona non grata with Albert Carré—her performance as Carmen had been regarded as outrageous—and privately Debussy told a friend: "not only does she sing out of tune, she speaks out of tune".;

Carré was keen on a new Scottish singer, Mary Garden, who had captivated the Parisian public when she had taken over the lead role in Gustave Charpentier's Louise shortly after its premiere in 1900. Debussy was reluctant at first but he later recalled how impressed he was when he heard her sing: "That was the gentle voice that I had heard in my inmost being, with its hesitantly tender and captivating charm, such that I had barely dared to hope for."

Maeterlinck claimed that he only learned of Garden's casting when it was announced in the press at the end of December 1901. He was furious and took legal action to prevent the opera from going ahead. When this failed—as it was bound to do, since he had given Debussy his written authorisation to stage the opera as he saw fit in 1895; —he told Leblanc that he was going to give Debussy "a few whacks to teach him some manners." He went to Debussy's home, where he threatened the composer. Madame Debussy intervened; the composer calmly remained seated. On 13 April 1902, about two weeks before the premiere, Le Figaro published a letter from Maeterlinck in which he dissociated himself the opera as "a work that is strange and hostile to me [...] I can only wish for its immediate and decided failure." Maeterlinck finally saw the opera in 1920, two years after Debussy's death. He later confessed: "In this affair I was entirely wrong and he was a thousand times right."Booklet notes by . Maeterlinck's original French: "...dans cette affaire j'avais entièrement tort et lui, mille fois raison."

Rehearsals