My paper on Pelleas at Melisande

Pelléas et Mélisande

Pelléas et Mélisande is a libretta with music written by Claude Debussy. It was adapted from the play Pelléas et Mélisande, written by Maurice Maeterlinck. It was Debussy’s only completed opera, first performed in 1902. The rendition of the opera that I watched was performed in 1999 in Glyndebourne. Director Graham Vick designed the set, and Andrew Davis conducts Pelléas et Mélisande. The main performers include Christiane Oelze, Richard Croft, and John Tomlinson. The most striking aspects of this production were not pertaining to the music and story, but rather in the set design, and the wardrobe of the performers.
When viewing Pelléas et Mélisande, I personally focused on Act I, as it introduces the setting and characters to the audience and generally makes the most important impression. I found the display of the stage to be interesting and beautiful, but the performance itself a little bit dry…even boring—maybe because I speak very little French. The set design and wardrobe were really the most impressive aspect of Act I. The staircase and wall décor really emphasized the feeling of wealth and beauty that the characters were living in, and made for an interesting stage for the audience to study should they not understand the lyrical description of the story (which in in French). The performers were very authentically dressed for wealthy people living in medieval times, with fancy and complicated wardrobe, and very expressive makeup and hair. Despite these technical aspects, I was still somewhat unimpressed overall by the performance. This may be due in part to the fact that I’m relatively new to opera, or maybe because it was simply the first act, and there hadn’t yet been a climax in the actual story, or a song that stood out from the others.
Technology is very important to Pelléas et Mélisande in terms of set design. The set is elegant and Victorian, and the entire stage comprises only one room, which because of it’s size and intricate decor delivers the audience to the notion that wealth is involved with the characters. Act I is comprised of indoor and outdoor scenes, which was interesting to see on a stage that is composed of one very large room. In order to differentiate between these two different settings, Vick uses very low lighting to depict the outdoor scenes (which take place in dark or darkening forests) and focuses softer, almost warm lights on only the performers, basically blacking out their surroundings. This is no doubt an interesting way around the one-room set restriction, but it especially works because of the setting written into the story—the dark forest. During the indoor scenes the lighting is much brighter on the surroundings, showing off the elegant and beautiful details of the Victorian room that makes up the stage. This was important for Vick to create because the indoor scenes in Act I take place in a castle in medieval times—a place of great wealth and elegance that comes with royalty. The furnishings of the set help convey the setting of the story to a non-French speaking audience.
Understanding only the setting is not adequate to understanding the story, and this is where the other important technological factor becomes important—costume and makeup design. Because Pelléas et Mélisande is an Opera, the characters sing rather than speak, making it easy to determine which characters are more important by seeing which performers are doing the solo singing. However, the makeup and wardrobe of these performers bring their roles in the story to a more meaningful level. The main characters are dressed in fancy, almost extravagant clothes with many different colors and intricate patterns. Less important characters to the story though maybe still wealthy, were dressed in less extravagant, but still fancy clothing, and were muted with less colorful patterns to demonstrate their less important places in the actual storyline. Subtly, coloring of makeup is another factor that determined the importance of a character. More important characters are made up to look more human and natural against the stage lighting, while secondary characters seem washed out by not only the lighting of the theatre, but also with dull, grayish, and largely monotone makeup. This use of color in the costumes and the makeup of the performers is not only aesthetically pleasing, but also distinguishes the importance of characters on stage to help further the audience’s understanding of the story.
As a production overall, I think Pelléas et Mélisande is an interesting experience. The actual storyline of this opera may seem ambiguous to an unseasoned audience such as myself, but the production itself does an excellent job of conveying the general ideas of the plot through the use of technology. With interesting set designs, and innovative ways of displaying such a limiting one-room set, no scene in Act I is compromised. In addition, with costumes and makeup that spare no detail, and intentionally contrast the importance of the different performers, the audience is able to understand what is happening in the story.