How can we save this ultra-bourgeois melodrama from its fate? You cannot change the story. You cannot bring justice here where a brother kills another brother, Cain killing Abel again, and since he is the grandson of a king, he is safe and will not have to go to a court and defend his acts. And behind we have a whole people dying of famine and these aristocrats are not even shamed by it, and they are proud of being rich.
How can we save this morbid bleak fable from oblivion? You can ask a phenomenal conductor who is going to give the music a tempo and a dramatic dimension of its own. Boulez did it in his time and now everyone wants to do the same. That will not save the plot, but it will transfix it at the purely musical level of beauty. Add a few great voices to the music and then you will have something that will enchant you, hypnotize you, provided the singers are well directed. But that is not saving the opera, that's only transvesting it into some glorious musical new clothes. Debussy makes that possible because his music is so creative that we feel it has to be as recent as not more than four or five years old. The singing itself can be easily made to transform the whole sad story into a supernatural tale told from the depth of a hellish abyss with no melodious musicality but we rough scattering of the notes as if they were a bagful of corn seeds to be thrown to the chicken we are, and these scattered notes fall on some vast and tightly stretched drumskin that gives a reverberation that makes each note a universe in itself, in themselves. You let yourself go into that tale as if you were the fairy herself, or himself - that would be good to have male fairies nowadays, and there is no need or no objection to make them gay too - telling the story. You are the storyteller, and the singers only lend you their voices.
Then you forget the trite and inhumane story itself.
But here in Vienna, they use another method, a supplementary method. They use the stage director and create a turning set that enables the stage to shift in no time from one castle room, to one bedroom in the castle, to a wild forest or a fancy garden, to grottoes and caves under the castle, to any other place you can imagine. Some sections of this set can go down and become an underground stage, or up and become balconies and terraces. We can trust Laurent Pelly to be able to invent such a set with stairs and doors everywhere to get in and get out, up and down, from one section to the next. Laurent Pelly has always liked doors, many doors, at all levels of the set, and doors that can be opened or closed. And he must have been happy with the story since the gates of the castle are closed on the fatal lethal night and according to the little boy - who is a girl by the way: no boys in Vienna? - the two young people who are supposed to be lovers always wonder about some door that is opened or closed. I am telling you doors, that's Laurent Pelly's universe. And I must say he managed to have at least half a dozen of these doors on his set, if not more. The set is a regenerating element in this opera or this production of this opera.
Then the conductor and director have to work together so that some sentences come out of the set and shine in full light and splendor now and then. "The door to the new era." ("La porte à l'ère nouvelle") or "How beautiful it is in the darkness!" ("Qu'il fait beau dans les ténèbres!") These sentences are not particularly brilliant but due to the way they are uttered by the singers in the particular spots in the set and moment in the plot, they suddenly become brilliant prophetization of the most modern world engaged in the most important transformation of humanity and the most drastic pandemic dark age. And then we can digest the fortune cookie I just cracked: "Whoever takes a step into hell has already come halfway." ("Qui fait un pas vers l'enfer a déjà parcouru la moitié du chemin.")
I know some people who are literally in love with this opera and run across the planet - soon Mars - to be able to see the latest production anywhere. I would not do that because traveling is not exactly exciting. But it is true with DVDs today we can line up ten or twenty different productions, collect them, play them one after the other. I am just amazed that a gay version has not yet been produced, with a supernatural wincestuous relationship between Pelléas and Mélisande, a boy mind you, and the third man of the ménage à trois, Golaud. Then the boy Yniold would definitely have to be a boy in this all-male cast. Then it might be funnier than just plain melodramatic.
I am afraid we will have to wait a couple of decades to be able to do this. I guess I won't see it. And life expectancy is going down, 2 ½ years for Black people and 2 years for Latinos, only 1 year on average which means probably only 2/3 years for white people. But what is my ethnic mixture?
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU
How can we save this morbid bleak fable from oblivion? You can ask a phenomenal conductor who is going to give the music a tempo and a dramatic dimension of its own. Boulez did it in his time and now everyone wants to do the same. That will not save the plot, but it will transfix it at the purely musical level of beauty. Add a few great voices to the music and then you will have something that will enchant you, hypnotize you, provided the singers are well directed. But that is not saving the opera, that's only transvesting it into some glorious musical new clothes. Debussy makes that possible because his music is so creative that we feel it has to be as recent as not more than four or five years old. The singing itself can be easily made to transform the whole sad story into a supernatural tale told from the depth of a hellish abyss with no melodious musicality but we rough scattering of the notes as if they were a bagful of corn seeds to be thrown to the chicken we are, and these scattered notes fall on some vast and tightly stretched drumskin that gives a reverberation that makes each note a universe in itself, in themselves. You let yourself go into that tale as if you were the fairy herself, or himself - that would be good to have male fairies nowadays, and there is no need or no objection to make them gay too - telling the story. You are the storyteller, and the singers only lend you their voices.
Then you forget the trite and inhumane story itself.
But here in Vienna, they use another method, a supplementary method. They use the stage director and create a turning set that enables the stage to shift in no time from one castle room, to one bedroom in the castle, to a wild forest or a fancy garden, to grottoes and caves under the castle, to any other place you can imagine. Some sections of this set can go down and become an underground stage, or up and become balconies and terraces. We can trust Laurent Pelly to be able to invent such a set with stairs and doors everywhere to get in and get out, up and down, from one section to the next. Laurent Pelly has always liked doors, many doors, at all levels of the set, and doors that can be opened or closed. And he must have been happy with the story since the gates of the castle are closed on the fatal lethal night and according to the little boy - who is a girl by the way: no boys in Vienna? - the two young people who are supposed to be lovers always wonder about some door that is opened or closed. I am telling you doors, that's Laurent Pelly's universe. And I must say he managed to have at least half a dozen of these doors on his set, if not more. The set is a regenerating element in this opera or this production of this opera.
Then the conductor and director have to work together so that some sentences come out of the set and shine in full light and splendor now and then. "The door to the new era." ("La porte à l'ère nouvelle") or "How beautiful it is in the darkness!" ("Qu'il fait beau dans les ténèbres!") These sentences are not particularly brilliant but due to the way they are uttered by the singers in the particular spots in the set and moment in the plot, they suddenly become brilliant prophetization of the most modern world engaged in the most important transformation of humanity and the most drastic pandemic dark age. And then we can digest the fortune cookie I just cracked: "Whoever takes a step into hell has already come halfway." ("Qui fait un pas vers l'enfer a déjà parcouru la moitié du chemin.")
I know some people who are literally in love with this opera and run across the planet - soon Mars - to be able to see the latest production anywhere. I would not do that because traveling is not exactly exciting. But it is true with DVDs today we can line up ten or twenty different productions, collect them, play them one after the other. I am just amazed that a gay version has not yet been produced, with a supernatural wincestuous relationship between Pelléas and Mélisande, a boy mind you, and the third man of the ménage à trois, Golaud. Then the boy Yniold would definitely have to be a boy in this all-male cast. Then it might be funnier than just plain melodramatic.
I am afraid we will have to wait a couple of decades to be able to do this. I guess I won't see it. And life expectancy is going down, 2 ½ years for Black people and 2 years for Latinos, only 1 year on average which means probably only 2/3 years for white people. But what is my ethnic mixture?
Dr. Jacques COULARDEAU