'Pelléas et Mélisande' at Liceu
Àlex Ollé is directing a production with a cinematographic touch and all the ingredients of a masterpiece: poetry, weightlessness and voluptuousness.
From 28 February to 8 March, the Gran Teatre del Liceu will host seven performances of Pelléas et Mélisande. The love triangle will be played out by tenor Stanislas de Barberyac, soprano Julie Fuchs and baritone Simon Keenlyside, accompanied by mezzo Sarah Connolly and basses Franz-Josef Selig and Stefano Palatchi – all this under the musical direction of Josep Pons.
In many ways, Pelléas et Mélisande can be considered the first modern opera of the 20th century. Claude Debussy premiered it in 1902, though he had been working on setting Maurice Maeterlinck's theatrical drama to music since 1894. Debussy wanted to move as far away as possible from Wagner's epic sonority, such as Die Walküre, which he partially did, as the plot is reminiscent of Tristan und Isolde. However, the musical language and approach were new, as Debussy constructed a world of his own with floating, dreamlike music in which the characters recite, rather than sing, as there are no verses with stable metrics to construct bel canto melodies.
The story is set in a weightless space, the kingdom of Allemonde, outside space and time. One night, the heir to the throne, Golaud, discovers a mysterious woman, Mélisande, in the forest, whom he marries. But Mélisande falls in love with Golaud's half-brother, Pelléas, who in many ways is reminiscent of Wagner's Parsifal. When Golaud discovers the deception, he kills her lover, but he cannot keep Mélissandre, who flees to her death to find him again.
As a symbolist work — and therefore opposed to realism — each aspect has a meaning that goes beyond appearance: the castle is a prison; the lake, death and resurrection; the forest, a labyrinth; and beyond is death, which is freedom. All these Freudian aspects were already addressed by Àlex Ollé in his 2015 production for the Dresden Semperoper, but now he takes it even further.
This time, Ollé takes filmmakers David Lynch and Lars Von Trier as references to create a decadent and inbred world through a disturbing, anguished and visually striking atmosphere. Ollé explains that "they are very short and fluid episodes without temporality" as well as "approached from a circular point of view as if Mélisandre always returned to the place she was fleeing from".
The set designer Alfons Flores recreates "a whirling universe, with a place in the centre that turns on itself and generates the sensation of concentric waves". It is an impenetrable prison, but the spectator can grasp what is going on inside through the cuts in the rock, the curtain that covers them and the branches of a spider's web of iron rods that trap Mélisande.
Tickets cost between 14 and 269 euros. There is an offer of two tickets for 175 euros. You can check out the prices and choose yours through this link.