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'Pelléas et Mélisande' is founded upon Maeterlinck's play of that name, the action of which it follows closely, but not closely enough, it seems, to please the poet, who publicly dissociated himself from the production of Debussy's opera and, metaphorically speaking, cursed it root and branch. Golaud, the son of King Arkel, wandering in the wood finds the damsel Mélisande sitting by a fountain.
He absorbed Moussorgsky, and built upon him, and he had Wagner at his finger-ends; like Charpentier he cannot keep Wagner out of his scores; the Bayreuth composer is the King Charles's head in his manuscript. Tristan und Isolde in particular must have haunted the composers of Louise, and Pelléas et Mélisande.
How, for example, she gives her voice the hue and colour of a jeune fille in Pelléas et Mélisande, for although Mélisande had been the bride of Barbe-Bleue before Golaud discovered her in the forest she had never learned to be anything else than innocent and distraught, unhappy and mysterious.
In Maeterlinck's earlier plays, in "Les Aveugles," "Intérieur," and even "Pelléas et Mélisande," he is dramatic after a new, experimental fashion of his own; "Monna Vanna" is dramatic in the obvious sense of the word. The action moves, and moves always in an interesting, even in a telling, way. But at the same time I cannot but feel that something has been lost.
Oh, to have a purpose, a prospect, a stake in the world, as this faithful soul had! "Can I help you at all, Melisande?" she asked, picking her way across the strewn floor. Melisande, patting down a pile of chiffon, seemed to be amused at such a notion. "Mademoiselle has her own art. Do I mix myself in that?" she cried, waving one hand towards the great malachite casket.
"Then please mount this to him at once," said Melisande, holding out the letter. "It is from Miss Dobson's part. Very express. I wait response." "You are very ugly," Katie signalled with her eyes. "I am very pretty. I have the Oxfordshire complexion. And I play the piano." With her lips she said merely, "His Grace is not called before nine o'clock."
Eating and drinking had at least supplied a distraction and cloak to the prevailing embarrassment. Bridge was out of the question in the general tension of nerves and tempers, and after Odo Finsberry had given a lugubrious rendering of "Melisande in the Wood" to a frigid audience, music was tacitly avoided.
The Fate theme, combined with that of Mélisande, colors the rest of the scene to the end. The conclusion of the act is striking: two flutes outline a variant of the Mélisande motive; a horn sounds the first three notes of the second measure of the Fate theme, and four horns and flute sustain, pp, an unresolved suspension C#-F#-A#-D#-G#.
It is a fact that good singing in the old-fashioned sense will help nobody out in Elektra, Ariane et Barbe-Bleue, Pelléas et Mélisande, or The Nightingale. These works are written in new styles and they demand a new technique. Put Mme. Melba, Mme. Destinn, Mme. Sembrich, or Mme. Galli-Curci to work on these scores and you will simply have a sad mess.
It is the motive of The Fountain. I quote it in the completer and more beautiful form in which it appears on page 57, measures 1-3. There is an interlude in which the Golaud, Mélisande, and Fate themes are heard. The rhythm of the latter theme mutters ominously in the bass as the second scene is disclosed.
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