Spellbound

Premiere of the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande"

We have no living memories associated with Claude Debussy's opera based on Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist drama Pelléas et Mélisande (world premiere in 1902 in Paris). It is not performed in Russia, and it was even more impossible to present it on our theater space than Wagner’s “Tristan” or Richard Strauss’ “Electra,” revived on the Mariinsky stage after almost a century-long intermission. Unlike these great opuses staged by Meyerhold at the beginning of the 20th century, there is no trace left of the only Russian incarnation of Pelleas (1915): they staged it in the wrong place, in the wrong way, and in the wrong way. “Pelleas” is a special matter that simply dissolves when touched roughly. A strange story, full of hanging questions, of a girl who found herself in the world of people and suddenly disappeared from it, told using a language devoid of operatic will: the soloists are all recitations, the orchestra is sighing and rustling, the contrasts are subtle, and the main event is... - the declaration of love of the main characters lasts only a few moments. The whole opera is a painful wait for something that never happens. The final ellipsis leaves a feeling of phantom - but did this story really happen?

Staged on the stage of the Musical Theater named after. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko as part of the Chekhov Festival, the Russian-French “Pelléas et Mélisande” conveys this feeling: a performance is a fragile substance when something is born out of nothing. Despite the tangibility of the scenographic design (designer Pierre-André Weitz) and the presence of real people on stage, Olivier Pi's production turns out to be transparent, illusory, almost ethereal. Meditation and inhibition are a property not only of the characters in this story, but also of the entire stage space: the actors are immersed in themselves so naturally that the question of their physical existence becomes secondary. They can simply stand on the proscenium facing the hall, their internal movements will be tangible for the audience. This happens because the director, having caught some important currents of Debussy’s music, developed the performance as its component, likening the actors to the voices of the score. Actors, like heroes of symbolist plays, are devoid of will. They do not act to fulfill their desires, but accept what happens to them while in a state of meditation. Everyone here is very good, especially young Jean-Sébastien Bou (Pellleas) and Sophie Marin-Degor (Mélisande) - flexible, plastic, responsive, whom the language would not dare to call opera singers, their existence is so non-violent and beautiful. These qualities, which are a rare exception for our opera stage, are demonstrated by the entire ensemble of Pelleas, including the French star François Le Roux (Golo) and the Russian premier Dmitry Stepanovich (Arkel), who entered the new sound environment with unearthly delicacy.

Throughout the entire performance, nothing special happens: hypnotically enchanted figures appear at different points on the stage, conveying submission to the invisible. In this seemingly weak-willed fluidity, there are two scenes for which it is worth coming to the play: the departure of Pelléas and the departure of Mélisande. In the first, about the fleeting nature of contact between people, the characters exist physically separately from each other, immersed in very close, but separated by an insurmountable boundary of space of light and shadow, after which their rapprochement seems absolutely impossible. The second is about the fragility of contact with the world: after the death of Pelleas, Melisande wanders inside a metal structure between frozen human figures: “the human soul is silent.” Silence seemed to be an impossible substance in the opera house. But all evening it exists as a metaphysical reality that is not violated by anything. And this is born at the moment when the world-famous French conductor Mark Minkowski, who understands what sophistication is, appears at the podium. Between his first movement and the beginning of the music there is a pause, a piece of silence, from which the entire “Pelleas” is born. And the existence of orchestral matter in a large opera production staged in Russia is for the first time perceived as irrefutable magic.

Marina BORISOVA