Review | Debussy’s dramatic opera delivered with sensuous power for Hong Kong fans
More sung drama than traditional opera, Pelléas et Mélisande can ask a lot of audiences, but Welsh National Opera pulls it off with realistic production, perfect French diction, and stand-out performances from cast and orchestra
Debussy’s only complete opera, Pelléas et Mélisande was considered revolutionary on its premiere in 1903 and even today is a commendably bold choice for the 2018 Hong Kong Arts Festival’s one Western opera.
Debussy’s goal was to steer clear of the grand-scale singing usual in opera to focus on text and drama, famously telling the original cast, “Forget, please, that you are singers”. The result is an opera that consists of sung dialogue: pure recitative with no arias, choruses or duets.
This starkly modern approach has its downside (two hours and 45 minutes without a melody isn’t easy on either performers or audience), but in this powerful production by Welsh National Opera its realism pays dividends on the dramatic side.
Based on Maeterlinck’s 1893 Symbolist play, Pelléas et Mélisande opens with Prince Golaud, a middle-aged widower, who gets lost while hunting in the forest and encounters a beautiful young girl weeping by a pool who says her name is Mélisande.
