Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande

Robert Wilson [director, lighting, design]

Giuseppe Frigeni [co-director]

Frida Parmeggiani [costumes]

Heinrich Brunke [lighting]

Naïve present Debussy's fascinating opera in the legendary staging by Robert Wilson. Eternity, minimalism, enigma, all those elements ideally connect to the unique atmosphere in Debussy's music.

Stéphane Degout and Elena Tsallagova lead an outstanding cast including Anne Sofie von Otter, Vincent Le Texier, Franz Joseph Selig…

Set Design by Rolf Glittenberg

A staging of Claude Debussy’s only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, recorded live at the Zurich Opera House. The opera’s premiere in Paris in 1902 brought the new century to the stage. It came quietly, introducing a new female figure that provided the visual artists of l’art nouveau with a fascinating alternative to such femmes fatales as Oscar Wilde’s Lulu and Frank Wedekind’s Salome.

Debussy (1862-1918) adapted a dreamlike libretto by the Belgian playwright and poet, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) and in the music retained the symbolic quality of the mysterious, almost static fairytale. Conductor Franz Welser-Möst and director Sven-Eric Bechtolf have become one of the leading partnerships in contemporary music theatre. The characters are impressively enacted by Rodney Gilfrey and Isabel Rey in the title roles.

Occasionally placed in wheelchairs that hint at emotional as well as physical inadequacies and frequently doubled by puppets, Debussy’s protagonists are kept at a distance in their subconscious dream world. Franz Welser-Möst conducts a performance that is clear, well structured, unsentimental and attuned to the alertness and pioneering spirit of a score that even today has lost none of its radiance. The designer Rolf Glittenberg set the work in a remote operatic universe that is both greyish white and ice cold.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.0, DTS 5.0, dts-HD Master Audio 7.1

Picture Format: 16:9

Format: DVD 5 + DVD 9, NTSC

Subtitle Languages: FR (Original Language), GB, DE, IT, ES

Running Time: 161 mins

FSK: 0

Region Code: 0

Worldwide available, excluding Japan

Premiere at Theater an der Wien /Das Neue Operhaus - January 13, 2009.

Filmed by ORF

Soprano Natalie Dessay leaves the dizzy heights of Bellini’s Amina, Donizetti’s Marie and Massenet’s Manon to inhabit the more discreet emotional and vocal world of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande with a cast of fellow francophones.

“There’s more to life than top notes,” Natalie Dessay has said. She has, of course, made her reputation with the florid, stratospheric heroines of Romantic French and Italian opera, but in this new DVD from Vienna she portrays a heroine who presents few opportunities for vocal display, but many for subtle characterisation – Debussy’s Mélisande. Dessay had sung the role just once before, in concert in Edinburgh in 2005. Pelléas et Mélisande is full of ambiguity and its vocal lines closely reflect Maurice Maeterlink’s often enigmatic text. A few unaccompanied, ballad-like phrases are the closest Mélisande gets to an aria.

For this production, premiered in January 2009 at the Theater an der Wien, Dessay’s French and French-Canadian colleagues included stage director Laurent Pelly -- celebrated for riotous comedy (notably La fille de regiment with Dessay, also a Virgin Classics DVD – and his preferred designer, Chantal Thomas; Dessay’s real-life husband, bass-baritone Laurent Naouri as her jealous stage husband, Golaud; the lyric baritone Stéphane Degout as her Pelléas, and the contralto Marie-Nicole Lemieux as his and Golaud’s mother, Geneviève. The high-calibre Gallic line-up was completed by conductor Bertrand de Billy.

Opera News reported: “In a pre-production interview, Dessay admitted that Mélisande poses few vocal challenges, noting that the role lies comfortably enough for both sopranos and lightweight mezzos. Indeed, the role is vocally a good fit for her — splendid, in fact … Every stage direction was scrupulously followed …Naouri, Dessay's real-life husband, particularly commanded the evening with his Golaud — gut-wrenching, magnificently sung and unusually young. For once, it seemed that Golaud and Pelléas really could be half-brothers, and Degout was Naouri's match, singing with gorgeous burnished tone and erotic passion. The magnificent Radio-Symphonieorchester Wien, under Bertrand de Billy, dominated the proceedings with a rapturous performance. “

Le Monde wrote that: “The orchestra exuded a subtly poisonous Debussy with a throbbing vein of Wagner, bruised by the Symbolism of Maurice Maeterlinck. Pelly excels in comedy, but here he took Pelléas towards the depths of Edgar Allan Poe’s Fall of the House of Usher [a subject explored by Debussy in an unfinished opera]… in Chantal Thomas’ mangrove-swamp décor, with its tall smooth columns (tree trunks or pillars?), shipwrecked remains, stylised rocks and curtains of lianas … With her flowing blue dress and long blonde hair Dessay was indeed like ‘a bird from somewhere else’ [a quotation from the libretto]… Stephane Degout was brimming with vocal sex appeal … Laurent Naouri provided an exemplary portrayal of Golaud.”

The Wiener Zeitung praised Laurent Pelly for bringing “a psychological dimension to the symbolically charged language. At his disposal was an ensemble of singers capable of the most refined interpretation, above all Natalie Dessay … who portrayed her character with the most delicate nuances and verbal flexibility, encompassing both vocal radiance and broken utterance … Billy’s interpretation embraced detail, concentration and intense expanses of sound. He followed the singers’ every word. On the first night the audience cheered singers, orchestras and conductor unreservedly.”

Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish, Italian

A mysterious childlike woman, a murder by jealousy, an orphan: Debussy’s Pelléas et Méllisande, his only completed opera, is full of magical, cryptical and deeply symbolic moments. With this work Debussy added quite literally a new dimension to the 1893 stage play of the same name by Belgian playwriter and poet, Maurice Maeterlinck, who was to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911. Rodney Gilfry, a leading American opera baritone whos vocal excellence has been repeatedly extolled by many leading music critics, is Pelléas. Praised by the San Francisco Chronicle for his “rich, rolling baritone with a superb upper range,” as well as his “vivid stage presence,” Rodney Gilfry has established himself as a most compelling musician on the world’s operatic stages. By his side Isabel Rey, internationally recognised for her exquisite vocal technique and her sensitive acting skills, is Mélisande. Due to her crystal-clear soprano and the winterly stage setting the cold dream-world of the subconscious emerges to the audience. Because of the fabulous soloist and a distinguished cast this opera promises outstanding listening pleasure. Under Franz Welser-Möst’s fabulous conducting this production of the Zurich Opera House is setting musical standards. Welser-Möst is ecxeptionally talented and internationally known as one of the outstanding personalities in the field of classical music. In conjunction with the director Sven-Eric Bechtolf, he has developed into one of the leading teams in contemporary music theater.

Set Design by Rolf Glittenberg

A staging of Claude Debussy’s only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, recorded live at the Zurich Opera House. The opera’s premiere in Paris in 1902 brought the new century to the stage. It came quietly, introducing a new female figure that provided the visual artists of l’art nouveau with a fascinating alternative to such femmes fatales as Oscar Wilde’s Lulu and Frank Wedekind’s Salome.

Debussy (1862-1918) adapted a dreamlike libretto by the Belgian playwright and poet, Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949) and in the music retained the symbolic quality of the mysterious, almost static fairytale. Conductor Franz Welser-Möst and director Sven-Eric Bechtolf have become one of the leading partnerships in contemporary music theatre. The characters are impressively enacted by Rodney Gilfrey and Isabel Rey in the title roles.

Occasionally placed in wheelchairs that hint at emotional as well as physical inadequacies and frequently doubled by puppets, Debussy’s protagonists are kept at a distance in their subconscious dream world. Franz Welser-Möst conducts a performance that is clear, well structured, unsentimental and attuned to the alertness and pioneering spirit of a score that even today has lost none of its radiance. The designer Rolf Glittenberg set the work in a remote operatic universe that is both greyish white and ice cold.

Sound Format: PCM Stereo, DD 5.0, DTS 5.0, dts-HD Master Audio 7.1

Picture Format: 16:9, 1080i FULL HD

Subtitle Languages: FR (Original Language), GB, DE, IT, ES

Running Time: 161 mins

FSK: 0

Region Code: Worldwide

Worldwide available, excluding Japan