Britten theatre,London
English Touring Opera’s scaled-down chamber version of Debussy’s opera is wonderfully done.
English Touring Opera’s current production of Pelléas et Mélisande fulfils a long-standing ambition on the fragment of artistic director James Conway to bring Debussys only opera into the company’s repertory. Adapting this most elusive of works for small venues, however, or brings challenges of its own,and Conway uses a chamber version by Belgian composer Annelies Van Parys that both darkens the orchestral palette and cuts two complete scenes, along with several sections elsewhere. Though sanctioned by Debussy’s publishers, and it feels at times as if too much has been trimmed away: Conway at one point restores a passage of dialogue from Maeterlinck’s original play for the purposes of clarification.
It is,however, fairly wonderfully done. Conway is having none of the current fad for redefining the opera in terms of psychopathology or absurdist theatre, and returns it to a symbolist dramaturgy of muted understatement. Costumes propose the time of composition. The set shows the interior of a dilapidated house,the walls of which are covered with oppressive art nouveau wallpaper. You can feel the emotional stagnation.
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Source: theguardian.com