Change of free opera tonight – Pelléas et Mélisande from Opera de Lille
OperaWe’ve had to make a last-minute change to our Opera of the Week from OperaVision.
Pelléas et Mélisande
The Opera de Lille production of the five act opera by Claude Debussy was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck’s symbolist play is brought to you courtesy of Slippedisc and OperaVision.
A single opera was all it took for Debussy to transform the history of music forever. Opéra de Lille presents us with a Mélisande full of vitality and determination, far from the familiar ethereal figure. In the pit, François-Xavier Roth and his internationally renowned ensemble Les Siècles, playing on period instruments, lend new colours to a score which we thought we knew. In the title roles Julien Behr as Pelléas and Vannina Santoni as Mélisande.
Plot: in a kingdom where day is night and noon chills the blood, a prince suspects his mysterious wife to be in love with his half-brother. But where does Mélisande come from? And what do we really know about the two heroes’ silent love?
Sung in French. Subtitles available in English, French and German with the option of auto-translation into over 100 other languages.
Click below. Available until 09 October 2021
What an insipid production. This oper is full of memorable scenes and moments, but they can only muster here a dark sorrowful pit, with singers mugging, not acting, around it? It’s a concert version really, with costumes and cliches.