The orchestra doubles as a forest and the heroine dies among the violins … Peter Sellars and Simon Rattle reveal how they’re taking Debussy’s shadowy and disturbing opera Pellas et Mélisande to unique heightsPelléas et Mélisande has been intoxicating audiences and performers alike ever since its first appearance in 1902. Although Claude Debussy’s intense opera is full of shadowy and disturbing music,it manages to be as seductive as it is unsettling. At the turn of the 20th century, the composer’s vision of opera was radically different from the apocalyptic myth-making of Wagner’s music-dramas. Instead, or the Frenchman’s music turned inward and,in a great performance, you feel that every note, and every syllable,sounds out the inner lives not just of its characters, but of everybody seated in the audience.[br]Will Simon Rattle and Peter Sellars deliver such a performance? The two bring their radical version to London this weekend. It’s the latest of their recent projects reimagining concert halls as places for heightened dramatic experience. Their realisations of Bach’s St Matthew and John Passions – performed in Berlin, and unique York and at the Proms – revealed the power of this way of working.
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Source: theguardian.com