Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande at the Paris Opera

In Wajdi Mouawad's "brilliantly involving" new Paris Opera production of Debussy's only opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, French soprano Sabine Devieilhe is "as near to perfection as one might wish for: a voice of exquisite beauty and sung as if the role [of Mélisande] had been written especially for her" (Opera Today) and Huw Montague Rendall, as Pelléas, projects a "faultless French phrasing, endowing [Pelléas] with the perfect blend of freshness and candor" (Bachtrack). Based on the classic symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck that the composer found to contain "far more humanity" than realism, Pelléas et Mélisande sets a tragic love triangle against some of Debussy's most soaringly dramatic music, all its Wagnerian flourishes brought out by Antonello Manacorda and the Paris Opera Orchestra. Mouawad's striking mise en scène plays compellingly on shadow and light and makes full use of gorgeous video projections by Stéphanie Jasmine, situating us vividly amid sylvan scenes of cascading waterfalls and noble castles in the mysterious kingdom of Allemonde…

Photo © Benoîte Fanton / Opéra national de Paris