Pelléas et Mélisande.

(1) Opera (drame lyrique) in 5 acts, 12 tableaux, by Debussy, comp. 1893 – 5 and 1901 – 2 , being a
nearly complete setting of the text of Maeterlinck's play of this name ( 1892 ). Prod. Paris 1902 ,
NY 1908 , London 1909 .

(2) Sym.‐poem after Maeterlinck, Op.5, by Schoenberg, comp. 1902 – 3 and f.p. 1905 (Vienna). F.p.
in England 1930 .

(3) Incidental mus. to Maeterlinck's play by Sibelius, Op.46, comp. 1905 for prod. in Helsinki.
Suite of 9 items for small orch. pubd. 1905 .

(4) Incidental mus. to Maeterlinck's play by Fauré, Op.80, comp. 1898 for London prod. (cond.
Fauré). Suite of 4 items for orch. pubd. 1900 and f.p. 1901 (also arr. for pf. solo, and pf., 4
hands).


Pelléas et Mélisande

(‘Pelléas and Mélisande’).

Opera in five acts by claude Debussy after maurice Maeterlinck’s play; Paris, Opéra-Comique (Salle
Favart), 30 April 1902.

Arkel King of Allemonde

                                         bass

Geneviève mother of Pelléas and Golaud

                                         contralto

Pelléas grandsons of Arkel

                                         baritone (‘Martin’)

Golaud grandsons of Arkel

                                         baritone

Mélisande

                                         soprano

Yniold Golaud’s son from a former liaison

                                         boy treble or soprano

The Doctor

                                         baritone

The Shepherd

                                         baritone

Unseen chorus of sailors (male voices); serving-women, paupers (silent)

Setting The kingdom of Allemonde and its surroundings; the time unspecified but presumably
medieval.

Maeterlinck established his reputation as a leading exponent of symbolist theatre in the early
1890s; his launch on to the Paris literary scene came with his play La princesse Maleine (1890).
Debussy had considered setting this play, the first in a series of symbolist works set loosely in
medieval times and praised by Le Figaro as ‘superior in beauty to what is most beautiful in
Shakespeare’.

Published in May 1892, Maeterlinck’s Pelléas was first performed at the Théâtre des
Bouffes-Parisiens on 17 May 1893. Debussy attended the single matinée but had already read the
work, as he recounted in a short article, ‘Pourquoi j’ai écrit Pelléas’, in 1902. In this article
he also explained his attraction to the play, revealing his confirmed allegiance to the tenets of
symbolism: 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 [‘décor orchestral’].Debussy had obtained Maeterlinck’s permission to use the
play in August 1893, and the following month he began work on the opera, starting, curiously, with
the climactic love scene between Pelléas and Mélisande in Act 4 scene iv. The initial process of
composition, when he worked mainly on one act at a time, lasted until August 1895.

It was probably relatively early on that Debussy decided to cut four scenes from the play, a
procedure endorsed by Maeterlinck. The opening, with its perhaps over-obvious symbolism of the
serving-women trying to open the door of the castle and wash an indelible stain from the entrance,
is difficult to imagine as the opening of an opera. The other cut scenes cause some detail to be
lost but do not affect the essence of the drama. Perhaps the most notable effect of the transition
from play to opera is the reduction of the serving-women to one silent appearance in the last act.

In addition to the excised scenes, Debussy made many cuts in Maeterlinck’s text, several times
eliminating repeated phrases, and also reducing the descriptive details that Maeterlinck
intentionally incorporated into the dialogue rather than into the almost non-existent stage
directions; in Act 1 scene ii of the opera, for example, Geneviève’s description of Mélisande as
‘always dressed like a princess, even though her clothes were torn by brambles’ is removed,
although it is clearly the sort of detail that stage designers can incorporate into the visual
aspect of a production.

Throughout the early period of intense composition Debussy revealed to several correspondents the
difficulties he found in portraying the mysterious and elusive nature of Maeterlinck’s characters.
To Ernest Chausson, he wrote of the difficulty of capturing the ‘nothingness’ (‘de ce “rien”’) he
found in Mélisande’s character, and the ‘beyond-the-grave’ (‘outre-tombe’) impression made by Arkel
(originally spelt Arkël), as well as his ‘gentleness’, which is ‘of those who are going to die’.
Such ideas clearly reveal Debussy’s deep response to the text; they also reflect Maeterlinck’s
ideas as expressed in his essays, which first appeared while Debussy was working on the opera and
were later published in the collection Le trésor des humbles. Other letters from the period of
composition reflect Debussy’s personal identification with the characters. He saved Act 2 until
last. Here he found new challenges, more to do with communicating the impending sense of mystery
and catastrophe than with characterization. On 17 August 1895 he could claim to have finished the
opera.

In accordance with his normal method of working, he had written the initial text in short score
with ideas for orchestration indicated, often in coloured inks. It was not until its acceptance at
the Opéra-Comique in 1898 that Debussy was spurred on to produce the vocal score necessary for
rehearsal purposes and the full score. In these he continued to make revisions, on occasion adding
and subtracting the appearances of principal motifs.

More radical revisions became necessary when the work went into rehearsal. It emerged that several
of Debussy’s original interludes were too short for the stage to be reorganized between scenes.
Under pressure, and with some reluctance, Debussy hastily extended several of them. The original
interludes are preserved in the first vocal score, in French only, published by Fromont in 1902,
while the full score and the French-English vocal score give the newer, longer interludes. Also
from the rehearsal period date several cuts, notably an exchange in Act 3 scene iv where Golaud
asks Yniold, who is spying on Pelléas and Mélisande, if the couple are near the bed. Despite the
publication in 1905–6 of a full score, Debussy continued to refine the orchestration. Some
alterations were incorporated into a second published edition (the study score in 1950 and the full
score in 1966), but further alterations are preserved only in Debussy’s personal copy.

At the première, Mary Garden sang the role of Mélisande and Jean Périer that of Pelléas (originally
a baritone role but later adapted for tenor). André Messager conducted and Albert Carré was the
producer. The realistic, detailed sets were by Lucien Jusseaume and Eugène Ronsin. At the dress
rehearsal a brochure satirizing the plot was distributed and this caused much levity during the
performance. Mary Garden claimed that Maeterlinck himself, angered by Debussy’s refusal to allow
his mistress Georgette Leblanc to sing the role of Mélisande, was responsible.

Critical reaction to the première was divided. One critic found the music ‘sickly’ and ‘lifeless’.
Others criticized the ‘impressionism’ of the work. Among the most perceptive reactions were those
of Dukas and d’Indy. Dukas found that ‘each bar exactly corresponded to the scene it portrayed …
and to the feelings it expressed’; while d’Indy elaborated on Debussy’s own comments on his work,
finding in it ‘simply felt and expressed human feelings and human suffering in human terms, despite
the outward appearance the characters give of living in a mysterious dream’.

Until 1914, Pelléas was revived almost every year at the Opéra-Comique. The casts included, from
1908, Maggie Teyte as Mélisande. Owing to the difficulty of finding a boy treble for Yniold, a
precedent was soon established (contrary to Debussy’s wishes) of giving the part to a woman. The
first performances outside France took place in Brussels and Frankfurt in 1907. The following year
the work was given in New York (with the Paris cast), at La Scala under Toscanini, in Prague,
Munich and Berlin, and at Covent Garden. After 1918 the work was many times revived, but it hardly
accorded with the anti-symbolist Cocteau-esque aesthetics of the interwar era. In the 1930s
Valdo-Barbey produced a new, less realistic set, merely suggesting where Jusseaume had defined.
Possibly drawing his inspiration from Maeterlinck himself, his décors paved the way for many future
productions in laying stress on the symbolic significance of everyday or natural objects: windows,
doors and trees.

A significant event in the opera’s history was the 1942 performance under Roger Désormière,
captured in the classic recording that many consider unsurpassed. Irène Joachim sang the part of
Mélisande and Jacques Jansen Pelléas. Postwar productions have often treated Maeterlinck’s setting
with considerable freedom, transferring the setting to the present day or, as in the 1985 Lyons
Opéra production, to the Edwardian era (with a short-haired Mélisande).

The performances and recording under Pierre Boulez were the first consciously to break with the
accepted, somewhat muted approach to the score. Rhythms were tightened up, contrasts enhanced.
Since the 1960s, several conductors – for better or worse – have revived the original shorter
interludes, among them two ENO productions conducted by Mark Elder. In 1985 John Eliot Gardiner
incorporated some of the changes in Debussy’s manuscript full score into the Lyons Opéra
performances.

Act  1.iA forestThe orchestral prelude  outlines three principal themes: the first – modal and
ecclesiastical with its bare 5ths and plainsong-like outline – is allied not to a character but
rather to the sense of timelessness, or perhaps the forest itself (for illustration see Debussy,
claude). Mainly confined to the first act, it contrasts with the following two, which are clear
character motifs pervading the whole opera: that of Golaud, with its distinctive dotted rhythm, and
that of Mélisande, a pentatonically curved phrase. Rhythmic and harmonic transformations mirror the
actions and symbolic development of the play.

Golaud has been out hunting but has lost his hounds and the boar he was pursuing. He lights upon a
maiden weeping by a well. She is nervous and rebuffs Golaud’s approaches (‘Ne me touchez pas! Ne me
touchez pas!’). Debussy captures the scene with the three motifs of the prelude, submitting them to
harmonic and rhythmic variants appropriate to the detailed emotions and symbols of the text.
Golaud’s energy for hunting is captured in the dotted rhythm which marks his motif, while the loss
of his quarry is reflected in the motif’s loss of its dotted-rhythm element (ex.1). The sadness and
fragility of Mélisande are suggested by the harmonizing of her essentially pentatonic motif with
half-diminished (‘Tristan’) chords (ex.2). The awakening of Golaud’s desire is represented by more
conventional added-note harmony (ex.3). It is more through the questions that are posed than by the
answers given that Mélisande’s character is developed: we learn that someone has done her wrong
(‘Tous! Tous!’) but we never learn who it was, nor from where Mélisande has come (‘Je me suis
enfuie! enfuie! enfuie!’). Here Debussy’s attention to pacing becomes evident. To underline
important dialogue, he could stretch the declamation towards arioso, while leaving more mundane
remarks to be quickly declaimed. He uses whole-tone chords in predominantly tonal surroundings to
convey her sense of being lost or confused.


Ex.3

Maeterlinck stresses the contrast between Mélisande’s youth and Golaud’s age: Golaud is taken with
Mélisande’s eyes, which never close, while she is repelled by his grey hair and giant-like quality.
Her oblique answers to his questions increase her air of mystery: ‘Quel âge avez-vous?’, (‘How old
are you?’) he asks. ‘Je commence à avoir froid’ (‘I’m beginning to feel cold’). The orchestra, too,
contributes to the feeling of mystery, with an inverted pedal note high in the strings. Golaud bids
Mélisande accompany him; she agrees only reluctantly, after a comment whose significance – like
many such remarks about the weather – clearly goes deeper than its literal meaning: ‘La nuit sera
très noire et très froide’ (‘The night will be very dark and very cold’). Debussy throws this into
relief with a ritardando and tenuto singing. The scene ends with Golaud’s admission that he too is
lost, and his motif is for the first time imbued with the white-note modality of the opening one:
the strongest forces are not those of the characters but in some power above and beyond, contained
perhaps within the dark forest itself.

In the first interlude, highlighted on a trumpet, comes a motif hinted at only once before, when
Golaud announced that he was Arkel’s grandson. Its importance is evident, but it extends beyond the
idea of a mere character-motif, demonstrating how Debussy could extend Maeterlinck’s theatre of
implication rather than direct expression by adding recurrent motifs intentionally unspecific in
their frame of reference (ex.4).

 1.iiA room in the castleGeneviève reads Arkel a letter from Golaud to  Pelléas, telling him that
he has married Mélisande. In depicting her character he adds to her mystery: ‘some great terror has
evidently befallen her’, he writes, going on to recount how she will ‘suddenly burst into tears
like a child’. Debussy sets the scene with utter simplicity, using Locrian and Phrygian modes on E.
Arkel, the silent sage, listens without interrupting. At the end of the letter, as Mélisande’s
motif is heard, Golaud expresses his anxiety about Arkel’s acceptance of her. If Arkel accepts, a
lamp must be lit.

Emphasizing the character’s inner strength, Debussy prepares for Arkel’s first statement with the
trumpet motif of the interlude, now played in the cellos ‘avec une grande expression’ and
harmonized with a half-diminished chord at once linking Arkel’s musical language with Mélisande’s
(ex.5). His response to Geneviève’s question ‘Qu’en dîtes-vous?’ (‘What do you say about this?’) at
the end of the letter clearly marks him as a man who is passive when faced with the force of
destiny. The E modes have now opened out to a clear E major and Debussy literally underscores the
import of Arkel’s utterances with held pedal notes: ‘Je n’en dis rien’ (‘I have nothing to say’) is
his response, and he goes on to point out that human beings can only ever see ‘the underside of
fate’.

Pelléas enters and Arkel, emphasizing his paradoxical blindness (since metaphorically he sees more
than most), asks who has come in. Geneviève explains that it is Pelléas, remarking that ‘he too has
been in tears’, linking him in our minds with Mélisande. Initiating a symbolic framework that will
become increasingly important, Arkel asks Pelléas to ‘move into the light’. The final phrase of the
scene forms a link between the external events of the play and a more symbolic level: ‘Aie soin
d’allumer la lampe dès ce soir’ (‘Take care to light the lamp before this evening’), Geneviève
reminds Pelléas, alluding to the prearranged signal to indicate Arkel’s acceptance of Golaud’s new
wife. But we surmise from Debussy’s setting that the remark has a deeper significance.

 1.iiiOutside the castlePrefaced in the  interlude by appearances of Mélisande’s motif, a different
level of response is required. Almost nothing happens. Instead there is a dialogue about darkness
and light, seeing and half-seeing, with objects appearing as mists clear or disappearing as night
falls. The gardens and forests are dark, and are portrayed with the key of C major, while the coast
where Geneviève and Mélisande have been seeking more light is portrayed with its diametrical
opposite, F ♯ major. A ship passes, with a chorus of sailors, but cannot be seen clearly in the
mist. Mélisande sees a guiding beacon out to sea. It grows dark, and she fears a shipwreck.
Geneviève leaves Pelléas and Mélisande alone for the first time: they see more guiding beacons, but
the wind rises and they have to leave. As we learn that they have a steep path to descend, and that
Pelléas must support Mélisande by the arm, we may again suspect a symbolic significance. The act
cadences, as yet tentatively in F ♯ major, as Mélisande perhaps flirtatiously expresses her hopes
that Pelléas will not go away. The key is significant. It has formed a link between the ‘light’ and
the growing bond between Pelléas and Mélisande.

Act  2.iBy a well in the parkThe well’s magic powers are remarked upon by  Pelléas: ‘it used to
cure the blind’, he observes, extending the symbolism of ‘seeing’ initiated in the first act.
Mélisande leans over from the cold marble beside the well, and her hair, longer than herself,
dangles into the water. Pelléas notices, and it seems to awaken a desire in him to know about
Golaud’s first meeting with her. Did Golaud try to kiss her, he asks, and did she want him to? She
answers with a simple ‘Non’. Suddenly distracted, she plays with her wedding ring above the water.
As inevitably it falls in, a harp arpeggio is heard, outlining a half-diminished chord on A ♯ . It
is the chord that had introduced the weeping Mélisande in Act 1. By using it here, Debussy subtly
indicates that a chapter in her life has been closed. ‘The ring is lost’, she remarks, ‘nought but
a circle of water remains’. Pelléas innocently remarks that if it cannot be recovered they can get
another one. Mélisande persuades herself that she lost it ‘in spite of herself’, ‘throwing it up
too high into the sunlight’. Pelléas remarks that it was striking noon as it fell; to Mélisande’s
question as to what they should tell Golaud he replies ‘the truth’. In an interlude, Golaud’s motif
interrupts the flowing semiquavers which have permeated the scene.

 2.iiA room in the castleGolaud is wounded  (as the dislocation of his dotted rhythm portrays: as
noon struck, his horse inexplicably bolted, ending up on top of him. He felt his ‘heart had been
torn in two’). Debussy introduces chiming discords perfectly capturing both the bells and Golaud’s
stifling pain (ex.6). Mélisande is tender to Golaud, offering him water and a change of pillow.
Suddenly, as the music continues with the plaintive oboe phrases and half-diminished harmonies of
her first-act weeping, Mélisande dissolves into tears. By no means the cardboard villain, Golaud is
sensitive and compassionate, understanding Mélisande’s complaint about the darkness and antiquity
of the castle. But suddenly the mood is broken as he notices that her ring is missing. He erupts,
demanding that she go and find it at once. He adds that she should take someone – Pelléas – with
her. She leaves, weeping.

 2.iiiOutside a grotto Pelléas and Mélisande enter the grotto, and the music, in contrast to the
scene by the well, moves to the ‘dark’ areas of C and F, with minor-key A ♭ s. The triplets that
oscillated diatonically in the outdoors in Act 2 scene i are now filled with an eerie tension:
chords of C major are uneasily juxtaposed with chords of D ♯ minor. But as the moonlight floods
into the cavern, a luxuriously orchestrated burst of the ‘light’ key of F ♯ is heard (notated as G
♭ ). Its beauty is, however, short-lived, giving way to stark 5ths reminiscent of Nuages from the
Nocturnes. Three paupers can be discerned in the moonlight, and this time, as they leave, Mélisande
rejects Pelléas’s offer of a helping hand.

Act  3.iOne of the towers of the castle  After a grooming-song reminiscent of a trouvère chanson,
Mélisande lets her hair down from the tower. She has opened the window to let in the warm night
air. Pelléas has never seen so many stars. Noticing her hair, he tells her that he finds her
beautiful, for the first time addressing her with the familiar ‘tu’. He wants to kiss her hand,
since he has to leave the next day. A fleeting symbol appears, a rose: Mélisande sees it, but
Pelléas cannot. As her hair cascades over him, Debussy gives us the nearest we have had to an aria,
but the melody is in the orchestra. The vocal lines curve more lyrically than before, more like an
expressive mélodie than a real aria. At the end of the scene Mélisande notices that her doves have
flown away. Pelléas must leave her, she remarks, ‘or else they will never come back’. A long pedal
note C (the tonic of the ‘dark’ key) heralds their disturbance by Golaud. It is nearly midnight, he
points out, underlining the contrast with their previous midday meeting. Angrily he warns them to
stop behaving like children.

 3.ii–iiiThe castle vaultsThe key of C forewarns of the symbolic darkness of the scene (which
Debussy considered particularly original). Golaud leads  Pelléas down to the stagnant water where
he may ‘smell the stench of death’. Encapsulating, for the second time, the ‘dark-light’ contrast
in immediate juxtaposition, the interlude directly portrays his escape into the sea air: ‘Je
respire enfin’. As he remarks that the gardens have been watered, the music moves into F ♯ major.
But Golaud now warns Pelléas that he suspects there may be something between him and Mélisande and
tells him to avoid her.

 3.ivOutside the castleYniold is  introduced for the first time. Considerable dramatic tension is
built up as Golaud gradually increases his physical and emotional pressure on the child to tell him
what he knows of Pelléas and Mélisande’s activities together. As he becomes increasingly frustrated
by Yniold’s innocently uninformative answers, the music rises to a feverish pitch, mirroring the
dramatic irony of the situation. At its climax, Golaud remarks that ‘he is like a blind man
searching for treasure on the ocean bed’. He recovers, and begins to interrogate Yniold afresh. He
asks him whether he has seen Pelléas and Mélisande kissing. Yniold replies that he has, and shows
Golaud how with a peck on the mouth, but recoiling at the prickliness of his beard as Mélisande had
done when she first met Golaud. Finally, employing a sinister ruse, ‘Veux-tu voir petite mère?’, he
gets Yniold to spy into the room where Pelléas and Mélisande are gazing silently at the light.

Act  4.iA room in the castleTo the sound of the semiquavers that had accompanied the ‘hair’ scene
(3.i), but now with more foreboding harmonies,  Pelléas and Mélisande make an assignation to meet
again by the well. ‘It will be [our] last night’, Pelléas remarks ominously.

 4.iiThe sameArkel enters with Mélisande,  his music clearly in E major. He foresees the return of
joy and light to the kingdom and remarks that Mélisande will be the agency of renewal. However, he
has been watching her, and explains that he has pitied her, for she has seemed like ‘someone
waiting for some dreadful doom in the sunlight of a beautiful garden’. In a scene of great
poignancy he explains the need of an old man ‘to touch the brow of a maid or the cheeks of a
child’: ‘one has a need for beauty alongside death’. The rich added-note chords, in unusual
orchestration, are the closest to conventional cadences of operatic love music thus far in the
opera.

Again, Maeterlinck used the poignancy of the scene to contrast with the violence of what happens
next. Golaud enters, at once angry with Mélisande, whom he will not have touch him. He takes his
sword from the prayer stool, inspecting the blade as the music nervously hints at motifs without
any real continuity, jumping from feigned calm to outbursts of violence. He looks into Mélisande’s
eyes, remarking, with heavy irony, upon their innocence: ‘You would think that the angels of heaven
were bathing there’. He bursts out that her flesh disgusts him and seizes her by her hair, forcing
her to her knees. As he regains his composure, he tells Mélisande that she may do as she pleases:
he will not play the spy. Arkel, in a line weightily set by Debussy, remarks ‘If I were God, I
would have pity on the hearts of men’. His utterance resonates into an interlude of extended power,
full of double-accented passing notes and middle-register brass.

 4.iiiBy a well in the parkAgain in direct  contrast, this scene is a symbolic one, with Yniold
playing. Debussy responds with a lightly scored, playful, off-beat rhythm to unify it. Two symbols
are introduced: first, Yniold’s golden ball is trapped and he cannot move it – a hopeless struggle
against destiny, perhaps; secondly, a flock of sheep passes. The shepherd remarks that they are not
on their way to the stable. ‘Where will they sleep for the night?’, asks Yniold pathetically.

 4.ivThe sameIn this, the final love scene,  Pelléas, suddenly eloquent in his imagery, realizes ‘I
have been playing and dreaming with the snares of destiny round about me’. As he remarks that he
has not yet really looked at Mélisande, her motif is heard for the first time. If he does not look,
it will be like ‘fetching water in a muslin bag’. Several times, perfectly capturing the nervous
intensity of their tryst, Debussy withdraws the orchestra: they meet, as it were, in total silence.
Immediately the dialogue returns to questions of light and dark. The couple hesitate, not knowing
whether to seek the light and shun the dark or vice versa. It is Pelléas who first declares his
love: a moment where again Debussy refrains from any orchestral accompaniment. ‘We have broken the
ice with red-hot irons’, he exclaims. With a new motif characterized by a quintuplet figure,
Debussy again introduces a quasi-aria, clearly in the ‘light’ key of F ♯ major. But ominous shadows
threaten, and the sound of the drawbridge closing is heard. Debussy’s portrayal of the contrary
emotions experienced by the couple is masterly: ‘All is lost! All is won!’, says Pelléas, ‘How
beautiful it is here in the darkness’. The two embrace passionately; but then Golaud falls on
Pelléas with his sword and kills him.

Act  5A bedroom in the castleThe act  begins at once with a new sound. The harmony is bare, using
diminished intervals and plangent wind, and hinting at the octatonic scale. Mélisande is dying and
the doctor is in attendance. He raises hopes of her recovery but Arkel knows better, sensing that
those in the room are quiet in spite of themselves. Golaud is full of remorse, persuading himself
that the love between Pelléas and Mélisande was like that ‘of little children’. As Mélisande asks
for the window to be opened, a triplet motif from the opening of the act is heard, floating in on
the curious harmonic basis of an unprepared second-inversion chord. ‘Which window?’, asks Arkel.
Mélisande replies, significantly, that she means ‘la grande fenêtre’. The ‘light-dark’ imagery is
now to be resolved, since the sun she and Pelléas sought is now to set. United with Arkel, ‘she
knows, but she does not know what she knows’. Golaud is again doubting and, soon after she realizes
his presence, his desire to interrogate her again overcomes him and he asks Arkel and the doctor to
leave. His first intense question – ‘do you pity me as I pity you?’ – is again highlighted by
silence in the orchestra. He asks whether she loved Pelléas. ‘Mais oui’, she replies, innocently
asking whether Pelléas is there. Golaud has learnt nothing, and Arkel and the doctor return.
Mélisande is cold and asks if the winter is coming. She has recently given birth to a little girl
and Arkel asks her to hold her daughter. Suddenly the serving-women enter in silence, not answering
when Golaud demands to know why they have come. Mélisande speaks no more; her eyes, too, are full
of tears. Golaud still wants to speak to her, but Arkel, accompanied by the final appearance of his
motif (ex.4) has his last utterance (see ex.7). The serving-women fall to their knees. ‘They are
right, they know’, says the doctor. Golaud sobs, and Arkel remarks that it is now the turn of the
little child. Finally, as the curtain falls, the music moves into the key of C ♯ major – sharper
still than the F ♯ major associated with light and love. The slow four-beat rhythm of the opening
completes the tragic circle of life, love and destiny as the curtain falls.

Ex.7

However it is produced or performed, the external events that form the plot of Pelléas are only
part of the point of the play. Maeterlinck’s symbolism, couched in seemingly insignificant
dialogue, demands a response far removed from that required for conventional 19th-century opera. A
more central question is the opera’s debt to Wagner. Whatever Debussy claimed, there are strongly
Wagnerian elements in Pelléas, notably in the harmony, which reflects procedures found in Tristan
and Parsifal, and in the system of leitmotifs portraying characters, themes and symbols. In an
article in Le théâtre in 1902, Debussy himself wrote out motifs, identifying one of them as the
‘thème initiale de Mélisande’, and in a rare technical comment about his opera, he interestingly
referred to his conscious treatment of Mélisande’s motif to emphasize the view he held of her
character: Notice that the motif which accompanies Mélisande is never altered. It comes back in the
fifth act unchanged in every respect because in fact Mélisande always remains the same and dies
without anyone – only old Arkel, perhaps – ever having understood her.

Richard Langham Smith

Figure OPERAF006317

Figure OPERAF006318

Figure OPERAF006319

Figure OPERAF006320

Figure OPERAF006321

Figure OPERAF006322

Figure OPERAF006323