Pelléas et Mélisande : Golaud's Turn

I have now watched Marco Arturo Marelli's brilliant 2017 Pelléas et Mélisande  produced for Vienna about half a dozen times, and, despite my raves when first seen, each ensuing viewing has become a more powerful experience than the one that preceded it.  

Though the costumes seem to place it in the early 20th century, Marelli has created a sense of a world without time, for the residents of Allemonde.  As has been true for most productions of Debussy's masterpiece of recent vintage, the story here similarly unravels on a unit set.  But, oh, what a set.  

Marelli has trapped his audience, along with Maeterlinck's doomed characters, in the dimly lit, grim, cheerless vaults of the forbidding Allemonde castle where nature seems to be a foreign concept. It has, in fact, become something spoken of . . .  alluded to, but never, ever seen.  Here the walls are impregnable to the outside world, and impenetrable to daylight.  A lagoon occupies the stage floor, and to drive the point home, Marelli has filled it with stagnant water navigated by multi-level precarious walkways.  

The effect works in perfect tandem with Debussy's complex score alternating from its dreamy gauziness, filled with lives of angst and worry, then punctuated with Golaud's unpredictable outbursts of malevolent violence.  It is only the outsider, Melisande who escapes, in what I can only describe as some sort of vision and apotheosis.  The dying or dead heroine of the story, is accompanied by eight graces who lead her spirit away by boat. . .  away into an orange, sunstreamed horizon - the only natural light we glimpse during the tale's duration, and this but for only a minute before being plunged back into the forboding dank world of this doomed castle. 

Water is in fact a constant element throughout Marelli's design, and its symbolism seems born of myriad possibilities, not the least of which include life, death, cleansing, stagnation, and entrappment, but ultimately also, escape.   

While I'm not generally a fan of singling out a non-titled principal character taking the focus of a production, Marelli makes the anchor of this Pelléas et Mélisande, Golaud.  In truth, it isn't a far stretch to say Debussy's opera could easily be titled "Golaud."  The role is here taken by the remarkable Simon Keenlyside, who was, for a good stretch of his career, one of the finest interpreters of Pelléas.  I have no reservations saying this:  even as good as he was, his work in the title role never touched (nor was it required to do so) the depths of despair we witness as the hero's older half brother. 

Marelli bookends the opera's opening and closing moments with twin failed suicide attempts by Golaud, who, as the tale begins, has neither the strength nor will to live.  In the opening scene, he props his rifle under his chin, stopping only when he spies the mysterious Mélisande crying.  Then, in the final scene, racked with remorse, shame and guilt so deep he cannot bare it, he again readies the weapon for his death, saved by his son, who, weeping, pushes the gun away before embracing and kissing his father, who can only look off into the distance, blindly.  Keenlyside is in his element vocally and theatrically, presenting a doomed man in the same league as Wozzeck.  It is perhaps the finest thing I've experienced him in - even if only on video (and I saw his wonderful Pelléas to Lorraine Hunt Lieberson's mesmerizing Mélisande).  Keenlyside makes Golaud's weeping, remorse and moaning sound as if arising from the profound depths of a truly hopeless soul, and I discovered that fighting back my own tears the most futile of exercises.   

Adrian Eröd's light, flexible baritone perfectly suited Pelléas' character.  His was not the youthful looking "boy" we usually see, but rather closer in age to Golaud, which worked well dramatically.  That said, he's physically spry and athletic (though a bit cautious on the dangerous walkways, which is understandable), and his fascination and love for  Mélisande feels more naturally childlike than born of passion. 

 This approach works with Olga Bezsmertna's fascinating, statuesque Mélisande, their love for one another feeling genuinely innocent. The murder of Pelléas becomes less horrific than most productions lately, yet somehow all the more wrenching because of Golaud's profound, almost paralyzing depression.  Here, there is no need for Mélisande to run away to hide, her husband will not be coming after her next and the scene becomes absolutely soul crushing.  

Kudos to the creative team for giving Mélisande a glorious mop of hair that extends to the floor and truly gives her not only a quality of mystery, but also imparts a character out of an ancient tragedy.  This effect is made all the more powerful during what can only be called (at least by me) as Mélisande's Apotheosis or Transfiguration.  

Bernarda Fink is a Geneviève of great motherly warmth, much more present than we usually see.  She is also vulnerable and visibly frightened by what she sees going on in the castle.  Franz-Josef Selig nearly steals the evening as the old blind king, Arkel.  The voluptuousness of his tone, it's warmth is stunning, and adds to a character who, despite having "seen it all" still offers compassion and hope.  

I typically cringe whenever a female soprano is assigned Yniold, but here diminutive coloratura Maria Nazarova makes a more believable - and well sung boy - than just about any "real boy" I can think of in recent memory.  

The highest praise goes to Maestro Altinoglu who has just the right "everything" going on with the Vienna Philharmonic, and dispatches Debussy's score in a reading that is both contemplative and propulsive.  Blessedly, the sound engineers captured all of this with refined precision that allows every instrument, every voice to be heard almost as if for the first time.  In a review immediately after the premiere, one critic described the effect as "a love affair between conductor and orchestra."  I'd agree.

(Note:  Unfortunately, this recording seems not to be any longer available, though I'd wager it can be found through the "usual channels," if not easily so.)