Pelléas et Mélisande is one of those delicate operas; it requires a special care and skills from the director to handle a tricky balance between the dramatic action and a perpetual interplay of symbols with music. If you surf on its libretto only, you are almost guaranteed to get a pretentious waves of boredom.
This opera is a touch of genius. Like most of his contemporaries,
Claude Debussy loved Wagner but not to the point that it would impede his own creativity. His music and his dramatic instincts are maybe close to what Wagner did in Parsifal, but Debussy
humanized those dramatic instincts by making them more intimate. The collateral effect --that in our days became the most significant part of Debussy's genius-- is that his music tickles our subconsciousness in a very different way from what we usually feel when listening to Wagner.
What about this DVD? In one line, it is ruined by
Laurent Pelly's staging but beatified by a superb
Natalie Dessay as
Mélisande.
