Catalogue # CHAN31773

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This live BBC broadcast of Claude Debussy’s ground-breaking\nopera Pelléas and Mélisande was recorded at the Coliseum in 1981.\nThe unique performance is now available on CD for the first time,\nas part of Chandos’ Opera in English historical series, performed\nby the English National Opera Orchestra and Chorus under Sir Mark\nElder, with the soloists Neil Howlett, Eilene Hannon, and Robert\nDean playing out the tragic love triangle.

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It is not so much the extremity of emotions in opera that moves\nus, but their intensity. And intense emotion does not need to be\nloud, or dramatic. It can be quiet, deep, and profound, as in this\noperatic masterpiece, based on Maeterlinck’s symbolist drama. With\nits simple setting of every day words, and slow-burning passion,\nthe opera emerged in the early twentieth century as the very\nantithesis to the Wagnerian style. In the words of Debussy himself:\n‘I imagine a kind of drama quite different from Wagner’s in which\nmusic would begin where the words are powerless as an expressive\nforce. Music is made for the inexpressible.’

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Debussy purposely avoided elaborate and lyrical language, and\nwrote in the simplest prose. In fact, most of the characters speak\nto one another in plain speech, and everything they say is, on the\nsurface, completely transparent. But the waters run deep, and as\nquestions bring about either the wrong reply or no reply at all,\nthe simple language only deepens the obscurity of what is actually\nbeing said.

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The plot is based on a tragic love triangle. Prince Golaud finds\na mysterious young woman, Mélisande, lost in a forest. He marries\nher and brings her back to the castle of his grandfather, King\nArkel of Allemonde. Here Mélisande becomes increasingly attached to\nGolaud’s half-brother, Pelléas, arousing Golaud’s jealousy. Golaud\ngoes to excessive lengths to find out the truth about the\nrelationship and Pelléas eventually decides to leave the castle,\nbut he arranges to meet Mélisande one last time and the two finally\nconfess their love for each other. Golaud, who has been\neavesdropping, rushes out and kills Pelléas. Not long after, having\ngiven birth to a daughter, and with Golaud still begging her to\ntell him ‘the truth’, Mélisande dies.

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Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande Sung in English

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Neil Howlett (Golaud), Eilene Hannon (Mélisande), Robert Dean\n(Pelleas), Sarah Walker (Genevieve), John Tomlinson (Arkel),\nRosanne Brackenridge (Yniold) & Sean Rea (Doctor)

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English National Opera Orchestra and Chorus, Mark Elder

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CD - 3 discs

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