<< Previous performance << >> Next performance >>
Pelléas et Mélisande
|
Composer |
Claude Debussy |
|
Librettist |
A slight alteration of Maeterlinck’s tragedy |
|
Venue and Dates |
Boston Symphony Hall, 16, 18 October 2003 (Concert Performance) |
|
Conductor |
Bernard Haitink |
|
Performers |
Mélisande : Lorraine Hunt Lieberson Geneviève : Nathalie Stutzmann Pelléas : Simon Keenlyside Golaud : Gerald Finley Arkel : John Tomlinson Yniold : James Danner |
|
Tanglewood Festival Chorus Boston Symphony Orchestra |
|
|
Notes |
A recording is available from House of Opera
This performance was also given at Carnegie Hall. Click here for details: |
What the critics say
Click here to read a wonderful and revealing review by Glynnis Rambaud
Jan Swafford for Opera, January 2004
"... Pelléas flowers when he is in love. Simon Keenlyside had a tall order to match Lieberson's superb vocal acting. For some time he merely sang beautifully, not quite the impetuous youth we want when he bursts in on Mélisande's solitude with "Moi ! Moi ! Et moi !". but later in their great, fatal scene by the well, Keenlyside's fine singing was joined to the drama and he became what Pelléas needs to be: vibrant, drunk with love, but still a boy, a tragic innocent..."
Astonishing Pelleas in Boston
From the Opera-L archives
"Simon Keenlyside was the other great performance, A Pelleas of almost dangerous innocence, a tall young prince of elegant bearing who couldn't quite suppress a nervousness and growing self-awareness that expressed itself in a telling busyness with the hands, or gestures begun but aborted for fear of revealing too much. Almost alone among the principals, Keenlyside gave an acting performance in this concert setting, in the process making it subtly but very clearly obvious that Pelleas exists in a different reality from those around him. In other words, this was a Pelleas just waiting for a Melisande to happen. Vocally, the man was a miracle. Without any fussiness or affectation he brought an ease and extraordinary ease of dynamic control to the remarkable phrasing that he lavished on this music."
"His lovely lyric baritone rises with ease to the almost tenorial climaxes required of Pelleas, losing nothing in strength or color as it descends through excellently integrated registers. The final love scene with Melisande, the weight of which falls squarely on Pelleas's shoulders was by turns ecstatic, heartbreaking, and luminous."
Extract from On the Beat, Opera News, January 2004, vol 68, no. 7
http://www.metoperafamily.org/operanews/issue/article.aspx?id=88&issueID=5&archive=true
“Many critics and listeners alike lament that we’re living in the Antiseptic Age of music-making, dominated by streamlined, highly proficient performances that somehow fail to move us on a deep level. Possibly true –– but isn’t it also true that the really galvanizing performances were always somewhat few and far between? In October, I was fortunate enough to hear a performance I consider inarguably, unqualifiedly great: a concert version of Pelléas et Mélisande, with Bernard Haitink conducting the Boston Symphony Orchestra and a cast headed by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, Simon Keenlyside and Gerald Finley. I heard the performance in Boston (Oct. 18) before it played Carnegie Hall two nights later. Never has Debussy’s mysterious work sprung to life quite so vividly. I have heard other conductors settle for turning the score into a plush pillow of sound –– sumptuous but not always dramatically compelling, and bordering on one-dimensional. Haitink and the BSO, on the other hand, gave a lean, muscular reading that gave full play to the score’s light and dark elements.
A few weeks later, I spoke by telephone with Haitink. He deflects compliments quickly, shifting the focus to the players: "The BSO has something with French music," he says. "They can play it extremely well. I find it difficult to recommend my own way of conducting. But I do think Pelléas should sound not like an apology but like a real reflection of what is happening in the drama. I do not believe in a Debussy which is vaguely ‘impressionistic’ –– I think it is clear in many ways. It’s a very somber world, but there are bright moments –– the fountain scene, for example. And Debussy has done it with such an incredible lightening up of sound that you simply must do it that way. The best thing when one has to interpret these pieces is to follow the composer. Let him take you by the hand."