Debussy's ideal of opera[edit]

Looking back in 1902, Debussy explained the protracted genesis of his only finished opera: "For a long time I
had been striving to write music for the theatre, but the form in which I wanted it to be was so unusual that after
several attempts I had given up on the idea."[1] There were many false starts before Pelléas et Mélisande. In the
1880s the young composer had toyed with several opera projects (Diane au Bois, Axël)[2] before accepting a
libretto on the theme of El Cid, entitled Rodrigue et Chimène, from the poet and Wagner aficionado Catulle
Mendès.[3]
At this point, Debussy too was a devotee of Wagner's music, but—eager to please his father—he was probably
more swayed by Mendès' promise of a performance at the Paris Opéra and the money and reputation this
would bring. Mendès' libretto, with its conventional plot, offered rather less encouragement to his creative
abilities.[4] In the words of Victor Lederer, "Desperate to sink his teeth into a project of substance, the young
composer accepted the type of old-fashioned libretto he dreaded, filled with howlers and lusty choruses of
soldiers calling for wine."[5] Debussy's letters and conversations with friends reveal his increasing frustration
with the Mendès libretto and the composer's enthusiasm for the Wagnerian aesthetic was also waning. In a
letter of January 1892, he wrote, "My life is hardship and misery thanks to this opera. Everything about it is
wrong for me." And to Paul Dukas, he confessed that Rodrigue was "totally at odds with all that I dream about,
demanding a type of music that is alien to me."[6]
Debussy was already formulating a new conception of opera. In a letter to Ernest Guiraud in 1890 he wrote:
"The ideal would be two associated dreams. No time, no place. No big scene [...] Music in opera is far too
predominant. Too much singing and the musical settings are too cumbersome [...] My idea is of a short libretto
with mobile scenes. No discussion or arguments between the characters whom I see at the mercy of life or
destiny."[7] It was only when Debussy discovered the new symbolist plays of Maurice Maeterlinck that he found
a form of drama that answered his ideal requirements for a libretto.

Finding the right libretto

Maeterlinck's plays were tremendously popular with the avant-garde in the Paris of the 1890s. They were anti-
naturalistic in content and style, forsaking external drama for a symbolic expression of the inner life of the
characters.[8] Debussy had seen a production of Maeterlinck's first play La princesse Maleine and, in 1891, he
applied for permission to set it but Maeterlinck had already promised it to Vincent d'Indy.[9]
Debussy's interest shifted to Pelléas et Mélisande, which he had read some time between its publication in May
1892 and its first performance at the Théâtre des Bouffes-Parisiens on 17 May 1893, which he attended.
[10]
 Pelléas was a work that fascinated many other musicians of the time: both Gabriel Fauré and Jean
Sibelius composed incidental music for the play, and Arnold Schoenberg wrote a tone poem on the theme.
Debussy found in it the ideal opera libretto for which he had been searching. [11] In a 1902 article, "Pourquoi j’ai
écrit Pelléas" (Why I wrote Pelléas), Debussy explained the appeal of the work:
"The drama of Pelléas which, despite its dream-like atmosphere, contains far more humanity than those so-
called ‘real-life documents’, seemed to suit my intentions admirably. In it there is an evocative language whose
sensitivity could be extended into music and into the orchestral backcloth." [10]

Debussy abandoned work on Rodrigue and Chimène and he approached Maeterlinck in August 1893 via his
friend, the poet Henri de Régnier for permission to set Pelléas. By the time Materlinck granted it Debussy had
already started work on the love scene in Act IV, a first version of which was completed in draft by early
September.[12] In November, Debussy made a trip to Belgium, where he played excerpts from his work in
progress to the famous violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in Brussels before visiting Maeterlinck at his home in Ghent.
Debussy described the playwright as being initially as shy as a "girl meeting an eligible young man", but the two
soon warmed to each other. Maeterlinck authorised Debussy to make whatever cuts in the play he wanted. He
also admitted to the composer that he knew nothing about music.[13]

Composition[edit]
Debussy decided to remove four scenes from the play (Act I Scene 1, Act II Scene 4, Act III Scene 1, Act V
Scene 1[14]), significantly reducing the role of the serving-women to one silent appearance in the last act. He
also cut back on the elaborate descriptions that Maeterlinck was fond of. Debussy's method of composition was
fairly systematic; he worked on only one act at a time but not necessarily in chronological order. The first scene
that he wrote was Act 4 Scene 4, the climactic love scene between Pelléas and Mélisande. [10]
Debussy finished the short score of the opera (without detailed orchestration) on 17 August 1895. He did not go
on to produce the full score needed for rehearsals until the Opéra-Comique accepted the work in 1898. At this
point he added the full orchestration, finished the vocal score, and made several revisions. It is this version that
went into rehearsals in January 1902.[10]

Putting Pelléas on stage[edit]
Finding a venue[edit]
Debussy spent years trying to find a suitable venue for the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande, realising he would
have difficulties getting such an innovative work staged. As he confided to his friend Camille Mauclair in 1895:
"It is no slight work. I should like to find a place for it, but you know I am badly received everywhere." He told
Mauclair that he had contemplated asking the wealthy aesthete Robert de Montesquiou to have it performed at
his Pavillon des Muses, but nothing came of this. [15] Meanwhile, Debussy refused all requests for permission to
present extracts from the opera in concert. He wrote: "if this work has any merit, it is above all in the connection
between its scenic and musical movement".[16]
The composer and conductor André Messager was a great admirer of Debussy's music and had heard him
play extracts from the opera. When Messager became chief conductor of the Opéra-Comique theatre in 1898,
his enthusiastic recommendations prompted Albert Carré, the head of the opera house, to visit Debussy and
hear the work played on the piano at two sessions, in May 1898 and April 1901. On the strength of this, Carré
accepted the work for the Opéra-Comique and on 3 May 1901 gave Debussy a written promise to perform the
opera the following season.[17]

Trouble with Maeterlinck

Maeterlinck wanted the role of Mélisande to go to his longtime companion Georgette Leblanc, who later
claimed that Debussy had had several rehearsals with her and was "thrilled with my interpretation". [18] However,
she was persona non grata with Albert Carré—her performance as Carmen had been regarded as outrageous
—and privately Debussy told a friend: "not only does she sing out of tune, she speaks out of tune". [19]
Carré was keen on a new Scottish singer, Mary Garden, who had captivated the Parisian public when she had
taken over the lead role in Gustave Charpentier's Louise shortly after its premiere in 1900. Debussy was
reluctant at first but he later recalled how impressed he was when he heard her sing: "That was the gentle
voice that I had heard in my inmost being, with its hesitantly tender and captivating charm, such that I had
barely dared to hope for."[20]
Maeterlinck claimed that he only learned of Garden's casting when it was announced in the press at the end of
December 1901.[21] He was furious and took legal action to prevent the opera from going ahead. When this
failed—as it was bound to do, since he had given Debussy his written authorisation to stage the opera as he
saw fit in 1895[22]—he told Leblanc that he was going to give Debussy "a few whacks to teach him some
manners." He went to Debussy's home, where he threatened the composer. Madame Debussy intervened; the
composer calmly remained seated.[23] On 13 April 1902, about two weeks before the premiere, Le
Figaro published a letter from Maeterlinck in which he dissociated himself the opera as "a work that is strange
and hostile to me [...] I can only wish for its immediate and decided failure." [24] Maeterlinck finally saw the opera
in 1920, two years after Debussy's death. He later confessed: "In this affair I was entirely wrong and he was a
thousand times right."[25]

Rehearsals[edit]
Rehearsals for Pelléas et Mélisande began on 13 January 1902 and lasted for 15 weeks. Debussy was present
for most of them.[26] Mélisande was not the only role which caused casting problems: the child (Blondin) who
was to play Yniold was not chosen until very later in the day and proved incapable of singing the part
competently. Yniold's main scene (Act IV Scene 3) was cut and only reinstated in later performances, when the
role was given to a woman. In the course of rehearsals it was discovered that the stage machinery of the
Opéra-Comique was unable to cope with the scene changes and Debussy had rapidly to compose orchestral
interludes to cover them, music which (according to Orledge) "proved the most expansive and obviously
Wagnerian in the opera."[21] Many of the orchestra and cast were hostile to Debussy's innovative work and, in
the words of Roger Nichols, "may not have taken altogether kindly to the composer's injunction, reported by
Mary Garden, to 'forget, please, that you are singers'." The dress rehearsal took place on the afternoon of
Monday, 28 April and was a rowdy affair. Someone—in Mary Garden's view, Maeterlinck—distributed a
salacious parody of the libretto. The audience also laughed at Yniold's repetition of the phrase "petit père" (little
father)[27] and at Garden's Scottish accent: it appears she pronounced courage as curages, meaning "the dirt
that gets stuck in drains".[28] The censor, Henri Roujon, asked Debussy to make a number of cuts before the
premiere, including Yniold's reference to Pelléas and Mélisande being "near the bed". Debussy agreed but kept
the libretto unaltered in the published score. [29]

Premiere[edit]
Pelléas et Mélisande received its first performance at the Opéra-Comique in Paris on 30 April 1902 with André
Messager conducting. The sets were designed in the Pre-Raphaelite style by Lucien Jusseaume and Eugène
Ronsin.[30][31] The premiere received a warmer reception than the dress rehearsal because a group of Debussy
aficionados counterbalanced the Opéra-Comique's regular subscribers, who found the work so objectionable.
Messager described the reaction: "[It was] certainly not a triumph, but no longer the disaster of two days
before...From the second performance onwards, the public remained calm and above all curious to hear this
work everyone was talking about...The little group of admirers, Conservatoire pupils and students for the most
part, grew day by day..."[32]
Critical reaction was mixed. Some accused the music of being "sickly and practically lifeless" [33] and of sounding
"like the noise of a squeaky door or a piece of furniture being moved about, or a child crying in the
distance."[34] Camille Saint-Saëns, a relentless opponent of Debussy's music, claimed he had abandoned his
customary summer holidays so he could stay in Paris and "say nasty things about Pelléas."[35] But others —
especially the younger generation of composers, students and aesthetes — were highly enthusiastic.
Debussy's friend Paul Dukas lauded the opera, Romain Rolland described it as "one of the three or four
outstanding achievements in French musical history",[36] and Vincent d'Indy wrote an extensive review which
compared the work to Wagner and early-17th-century Italian opera. D'Indy found Pelléas moving, too: "The
composer has in fact simply felt and expressed the human feelings and human sufferings in human terms,
despite the outward appearance the characters present of living in a dream." [37] The opera won a "cult following"
among young aesthetes, and the writer Jean Lorrain satirised the "Pelléastres" who aped the costumes and
hairstyles of Mary Garden and the rest of the cast. [38]

Performance history[edit]
The initial run lasted for 14 performances, making a profit for the Opéra-Comique. It became a staple part in the
repertory of the theatre, reaching its hundredth performance there on 25 January 1913.[39] In 1908, Maggie
Teyte took over the role of Mélisande from Mary Garden. She described Debussy's reaction on learning her
nationality: "Une autre anglaise—Mon Dieu" ("Another Englishwoman—my God"). Teyte also wrote about the
composer's perfectionist character and his relations with the cast:
As a teacher he was pedantic—that's the only word. Really pedantic [...] There was a core of anger and
bitterness in him—I often think he was rather like Golaud in Pelléas and yet he wasn't. He was—it's in all his
music—a very sensual man. No one seemed to like him. Jean Périer, who played Pelléas to my Mélisande,
went white with anger if you mentioned the name of Debussy... [40]

Debussy's perfectionism—plus his dislike of the attendant publicity—was one of the reasons why he rarely
attended performances of Pelléas et Mélisande. However, he did supervise the first foreign production of the
opera, which appeared at the Théâtre de la Monnaie, Brussels on 9 January 1907. This was followed by
foreign premieres in Frankfurt on 19 April of the same year, New York City at the Manhattan Opera House on
19 February 1908, and at La Scala, Milan with Arturo Toscanini conducting on 2 April 1908.[41] It first appeared
in the United Kingdom at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden on 21 May 1909.[30]
In the years following World War I, the popularity of Pelléas et Mélisande began to fade somewhat. As Roger
Nichols writes, "[The] two qualities of being escapist and easily caricatured meant that in the brittle, post-war
Parisian climate Pelléas could be written off as no longer relevant." [42] The situation was the same abroad and in
1940 the English critic Edward J. Dent observed that "Pelléas et Mélisande seems to have fallen completely
into oblivion." However, the Canadian premiere was given that same year at the Montreal Festivals under the
baton of Wilfrid Pelletier.[43] Interest was further revived by the famous production which debuted at the Opéra-
Comique on 22 May 1942 under the baton of Roger Désormière with Jacques Jansen and Irène Joachim in the
title roles. The couple became "the Pelléas and Mélisande for a whole generation of opera-goers, last
appearing together at the Opéra-Comique in 1955." [44]
The Australian premiere was a student production at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in June 1950,
conducted by Eugene Goossens, with Renee Goossens (no relation) as Mélisande. The first professional
staging in Australia was in June 1977, with the Victorian State Opera under Richard Divall.[45]
Notable later productions include those with set designs by Jean Cocteau (first performed in Marseille in 1963),
and the 1969 Covent Garden production conducted by Pierre Boulez. Boulez's rejection of the tradition
of Pelléas conducting caused controversy among critics who accused him of "Wagnerising" Debussy, to which
Boulez responded that the work was indeed heavily influenced by Wagner's Parsifal.[46] Boulez returned to
conduct Pelléas in an acclaimed production by the German director Peter Stein for the Welsh National Opera in
1992. Modern productions have frequently re-imagined Maeterlinck's setting, often moving the time period to
the present day or other time period; for instance, the 1985 Opéra National de Lyon production set the opera
during the Edwardian era.[10] This production was considered a launching point for French baritone François Le
Roux,[47] whom critics have called the "finest Pelléas of his generation." [48]
In 1983, Marius Constant compiled a 20-minute "Symphonie" based on the opera.[49][50]