Debussy: Pelléas et Mélisande

This new Pelléas et Mélisande from the Opernhaus Zürich should be remembered as one of Dmitri Tcherniakov’s most innovative production. Forget about the fountains, the caverns, the forest, the castles and the towers : here, the density of Maurice Maeterlinck’s and Claude Debussy’s symbolism becomes the starting point of an analytical journey into the human mind : it is now the psychoanalyst, ‘‘doctor’’ Golaud, who has to uncover the secrets of Melisande, an unfortunate and traumatized creature he brings home, and whose silence and puzzling attitude eventually bring him on the verge of insanity. But this production is also the occasion for a reunion between Dmitri Tcherniakov and French conductor Alain Altinoglu, after the tremendous success of the Tchaikovsky diptych Iolanta / The Nutcracker – arguably one of the most successful titles of the Bel Air Classiques catalogue. Their artistic complicity is intact : the precise, analytical but also nuanced and poetic baton of Altinoglu proves to be the best possible response to Tcherniakov’s subtle exploration of the human psychology. Corinne Winters, as Melisande, Jacques Imbrailo, as Pelléas, and especially Kyle Ketelsen, as Golaud, embody with an incandescent realism these characters plagued by a form of evil and violence that we will never quite understand.