Carnegie Hall, New York; October 20, 2003
Pelléas et Mélisande is the most fragile of operatic masterpieces, a diaphanous web of brilliant orchestral sounds wrapped around an enigmatic story and declamatory vocal lines. Without anything approaching a conventional aria it almost defines the term “a connoisseur’s opera,” but anyone with an ear to hear, a mind to think, and a heart to feel would have been transported to opera heaven by the Boston Symphony’s concert performance of the work at Carnegie Hall Monday night. Surtitles helped clarify the narrative for non French-speakers, while its necessary compression focused attention on the plethora of symbols that threaten to overwhelm both story and characters. Along with oft-repeated dichotomies like light-dark, sun-moon, ascent-descent, blindness-seeing, and the like, playwright Maurice Maeterlinck dips into what a century later have become Freudian clichés like crowns and wedding rings falling into deep wells, emphasizing the sexual hothouse atmosphere of the opera. Virtually every scene features someone asking urgent questions of another character, eliciting vague, evasive answers. The real answers are in the orchestra, whose brilliant sounds and combinations of instruments reveal the heart of the puzzling fairy-tale story. From that orchestra come subtle colors along with rare fortissimos that, when they occur, as in Pelléas’ erotic frenzy in the Tower scene or the lovers’ wild abandon in Act IV, lay bare the sexual undercurrents of the opera. Staggering too, was Debussy’s reversal of Wagner’s descent into the underworld in Das Rheingold; here a brilliant orchestral ascent from the darkness of stagnant subterranean vaults smelling of death into the bright sun, sea and flowers above.
Without the crutches of extended melodies and fully comprehensible story line, enormous burdens are laid upon singers and orchestra. They are true equals, so while stage performance can clarify aspects of the narrative, a concert version compensates by enhancing balances and orchestral clarity. In fact, in this operatic age of the director, concert performance liberates us from protagonists in trenchcoats or army uniforms climbing steeply raked stages capped by ruined columns symbolizing the decay of the famine-ridden land of the blind, the kingdom of Allemonde. Instead, we just get the music, superbly sung and played on Monday night.
A prime reason why this Pelléas et Mélisande will permanently lodge in the memory was the brilliant orchestral playing and the leadership of the BSO’s Principal Guest Conductor, Bernard Haitink. Maestro Haitink, always a fine Debussyian, achieved a breathtaking range of colors while maintaining the flow of music that can tempt conductors into the aural equivalent of a warm bath. Haitink elicited a welcome firmness, impressionism with a backbone, making the oft-heard pallid pastels more vivid, removing a veil or two from an already heavily veiled opera. He was joined by outstanding singers. Mezzo Lorraine Hunt-Lieberson is the Mélisande of our time. This great singing actress turned herself into the frail, doomed beauty. Her every utterance rang true – true to the music, true to the character. She rose to magnificent heights in the scene where the lovers declare their feelings. There, Pelléas describes his beloved’s voice as coming from another world, as crossing the sea in Spring, as rain, an angel, fresh as water. And each time, the text describes the sounds Hunt-Lieberson makes. In the death scene, she again brings a Callas-like ability to color and alter her voice to illuminate the inner meaning of the utterance. Her Pelléas, baritone Simon Keenlyside, was equally involving, blending fine vocalism with characterization, withdrawn at first, slowly falling under Mélisande’s spell, then frenzied in his obsession. Poor Golaud, Mélisande’s husband, was brilliantly sung by baritone Gerald Finley, whose sympathetic portrayal kept him from being the villain we sometimes see on stage; here he’s a rounded character, lost, as old Arkel says, like all humans. Arkel was impressively detailed by John Tomlinson and his cavernous bass. Geneviève, mother of Golaud and Pelléas, was done to perfection by contralto Nathalie Stutzmann, and 8th grader boy soprano James Danner, was an outstanding Yniold.
Dan Davis
