Unlocking the secrets of Claude Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande, based on Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist play, is a challenging endeavor even under ideal circumstances. Achieving this with a minimal staging, where the orchestra shares the platform with the singers, proves even more difficult. For the opening performance of this summer's Aldeburgh Festival, conductor Ryan Wigglesworth, a featured artist this year, reunited with actor and occasional opera director Rory Kinnear to take on this very challenge.
Minimalist Production
Apart from a few industrial-style pendant lights and a single high stool, the production featured no props or scenery—unless one counts the orchestra, through which the characters moved as if the instrumentalists represented the forest surrounding the castle. Costumes, credited to Vicki Mortimer, were understated: dark suits for the royal men, tattered bridal white for Mélisande, and drab boiler suits for the silent onstage extras, who also provided the brief offstage chorus.
Lighting as a Key Element
Visually, the production relied heavily on lighting. Working with lighting designers Paule Constable and Imogen Clarke, Kinnear drew inspiration from the text's numerous references to shadow and light. Characters moved through spots or pools of light on the platform or walked in the dim glow of music-stand lights among the orchestra. When Geneviève sang of the distant glint from the sea, the foyer light beamed in through an open door near the back as her son Pelléas made his entrance, singing from the aisle as he approached the stage through the auditorium. His eventual, inevitable kiss with his brother's wife took place in a blaze of side lights.
Musical Performance
Conducted by Wigglesworth, the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra often sounded glorious, especially in the interludes. However, music that can seem ethereal when emanating from an orchestra pit felt solid and earthy here. This was not a problem for the singers, whose voices came across with warm immediacy in the Snape acoustic. Nicolas Testé's cavernous Arkel, Sarah Connolly's luxuriant Geneviève, and Beth Stirling's chirpy Yniold all shone. There was convincing sibling rivalry between Gordon Bintner's velvet-wrapped forceful Golaud and Jacques Imbrailo's appealingly heartfelt Pelléas.
Mélisande's Enigma
But where did mysterious Mélisande fit in? Sophie Bevan shone vocally in the role, her soprano silvery and fluid, but in this stripped-back context, the character had little to do except gaze inscrutably out into the audience, arms by her side—blank rather than mysterious. This intelligent semi-staging was gratifyingly ambitious in what it set out to achieve and nearly succeeded, but Debussy's opera remains ever elusive.
The Aldeburgh Festival continues until 28 June.
