Concettina Died and Other Stories of the East Side
PhotographsDownloadsLinksSelf-portraitContact


"Pelléas et Mélisande" posted February 9, 2005 at 11:39 PM

For the first time this year, Mark Fox and I got our asses up to the Met at 9am Saturday to buy standing room tickets, this time for the Met's 109th performance of Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande. Once we'd taken our places in the standees' section behind the orchestra section, Mark asked, "What's this opera about?" "Love and betrayal," I said. Heh. That's all opera.

More specifically, a woman falls in love with her husband's brother. You know what happens next--they're not all living when the curtain comes down.

Last night's performance was one of the greatest opera nights I have ever heard. The music is pulsating, slow, mysterious, creepy, and very round. There are no arias, no duets, nothing structured like traditional opera scores. Just extremely long melodic lines, meandering themes ebbing and flowing for four gorgeous hours. James Levine was conducting. I overheard one of the ushers complaining that his leisurely tempos make the opera a full fifteen minutes longer than other Met conductors. And his tempos wereleisurely, and perfect. The singing and the acting, too, were superb. Anne Sofie vnon Otter sang Mélisande. Her voice is clear but not pristine like Dawn Upshaw's (the last Mélisande I heard at the Met). She's got an earthy quality, almost as if her clear soprano has some kind of mute on it. Aidan noted that she gave quite a bit of strength to a role that many singers play for weakness.

William Burden sang the tenor role of Pelléas. He also has a very clear voice, and he was very expressive. It's a strange role because he doesn't actually get to do much (like Tony in West Side Story--central to the plot, but more or less all he has to do is walk around being in love with someone he shouldn't be). The heavy lifting in the acting department in this opera is left to Golaud, the betrayed husband. This was sung by José van Dam, who is probably too old for the part, and who couldn't have been more perfect. He was creepy, strong, threatening, and guarded. At the end of Act III he has a scene with his young son where he grows angry and violent and scares the wits out of the little boy--and it was a thrilling performance that had me in goosebumps.

The production is by Jonathan Miller. It has a nice slow pacing that matches the music and it makes great use of the Met's huge turntable. Aidan was very dismissive of it, but Mark and I were very enthusiastic about it. This is the second time I've seen it, the first being five or six years ago, and I loved it both then and now. But really, it would take something pretty awful to bring this amazing music down, especially with a terrific cast like this one.


Comments (0)