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Jan. 16th, 2019 08:46 amPelleas et Melisande by Claude Debussy, at the Met. Isabel Leonard as Melisande, Paul Appleby as Pelleas, Kyle Ketelsen as Golaud.
This is an opera that's been on my must-see list since I wrote Debussy/Ravel for Yuletide several years back. Pelleas was a central motif in the fic, as Ravel's fandom of the opera (he saw it something like forty times) was one of the early connections between the two. I anchored one of the most romantic scenes in the fic around the two of them sitting on a piano bench and Debussy demonstrating the melody On Dirait to Ravel. I listened to significant excerpts while writing, but I'd never seen the whole opera, so this was a treat.
Debussy's music here is like nothing else you've ever heard in opera. In an interview in the playbill, Yannick Nezet-Seguin says that if you took away the vocal lines, the orchestral score would stand on its own as one of the great symphonic scores of history. The harmonic work is amazing, and so, so very Debussy in its expressionism. In between each of the scenes is an orchestral interlude that does so much of the heavy lifting of emotional storytelling, and these interludes are amazing. But then Yannick says that he doesn't say that to be dismissive of the vocal lines, which are beautiful on their own. Debussy has a masterful grasp for conversational recitative and he blurs it with aria/melodic lines so skillfully and swiftly that it's breathtaking.
On Dirait in particular... I was on the lookout for it because my research at the time had suggested it would be the best choice for the scene in my fic, and I was curious to see if listening bore that out. I feel vindicated. It's an amazing moment... Pelleas tells Melisande Je t'aime, and she whispers it back, so quickly that Pelleas is unsure what he's heard, and so is the audience. Over a couple lines of Debussy's slippery recitative he processes what he's heard and then On Dirait is this explosive moment of melodic joy that almost immediately fades away as he continues to process the meaning of their confession and to understand the potential consequences. It's a stunning emotional moment and I love the idea of Claude intimately sharing it with Maurice, one of the few people he knows who feel music as deeply as he does.
One of the things the orchestral interludes do is attenuate time passage. Some scenes are, based on textual clues, immediately successive. Others have significant chunks of time between them- days or even months. The whole story takes on a dreamy air as a result of the elusiveness of time's passage.
And in general the scenario is Symbolism at its most emotionally resonant and inscrutable. Melisande has all these vague figurations of fairy tale and myth, blended with realistic emotional complexity. She is a woman who wears many symbols of PTSD, and is just clawing against life to feel like herself again. Falling into the fated and cursed company of Arkel's castle does her no favors. But she is also the mysterious woman discovered at the waterside, the sirenic, fateful destroyer of lives. It's a marvelous combination.
Lastly, I want to register my amusement that the opera, albeit briefly, passes the![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sanguinity-Bechdel Test:
1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man,
4. and that something is tall ships.
This is an opera that's been on my must-see list since I wrote Debussy/Ravel for Yuletide several years back. Pelleas was a central motif in the fic, as Ravel's fandom of the opera (he saw it something like forty times) was one of the early connections between the two. I anchored one of the most romantic scenes in the fic around the two of them sitting on a piano bench and Debussy demonstrating the melody On Dirait to Ravel. I listened to significant excerpts while writing, but I'd never seen the whole opera, so this was a treat.
Debussy's music here is like nothing else you've ever heard in opera. In an interview in the playbill, Yannick Nezet-Seguin says that if you took away the vocal lines, the orchestral score would stand on its own as one of the great symphonic scores of history. The harmonic work is amazing, and so, so very Debussy in its expressionism. In between each of the scenes is an orchestral interlude that does so much of the heavy lifting of emotional storytelling, and these interludes are amazing. But then Yannick says that he doesn't say that to be dismissive of the vocal lines, which are beautiful on their own. Debussy has a masterful grasp for conversational recitative and he blurs it with aria/melodic lines so skillfully and swiftly that it's breathtaking.
On Dirait in particular... I was on the lookout for it because my research at the time had suggested it would be the best choice for the scene in my fic, and I was curious to see if listening bore that out. I feel vindicated. It's an amazing moment... Pelleas tells Melisande Je t'aime, and she whispers it back, so quickly that Pelleas is unsure what he's heard, and so is the audience. Over a couple lines of Debussy's slippery recitative he processes what he's heard and then On Dirait is this explosive moment of melodic joy that almost immediately fades away as he continues to process the meaning of their confession and to understand the potential consequences. It's a stunning emotional moment and I love the idea of Claude intimately sharing it with Maurice, one of the few people he knows who feel music as deeply as he does.
One of the things the orchestral interludes do is attenuate time passage. Some scenes are, based on textual clues, immediately successive. Others have significant chunks of time between them- days or even months. The whole story takes on a dreamy air as a result of the elusiveness of time's passage.
And in general the scenario is Symbolism at its most emotionally resonant and inscrutable. Melisande has all these vague figurations of fairy tale and myth, blended with realistic emotional complexity. She is a woman who wears many symbols of PTSD, and is just clawing against life to feel like herself again. Falling into the fated and cursed company of Arkel's castle does her no favors. But she is also the mysterious woman discovered at the waterside, the sirenic, fateful destroyer of lives. It's a marvelous combination.
Lastly, I want to register my amusement that the opera, albeit briefly, passes the
sanguinity-Bechdel Test:1. It has to have at least two women in it,
2. who talk to each other,
3. about something besides a man,
4. and that something is tall ships.