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Updated: June 28, 2025
Among recent French operas, works of tragic import, treated with all the intricacy of the most advanced modern schools, have been received with far greater favour than have been shown to works of the lighter class which we associate with the genius of the French nation; and of late years the vogue of such works as 'Louise' or 'Pelléas et Mélisande' shows that the taste for music without any special form has conquered the very nation in which form has generally ranked highest.
She smiled and fell into another dream about John, leaning over the fountain, with her copper braids falling across her bosom. She had forgotten all the outside things, until presently she felt some one standing near her. "Lean down to the water, Melisande, Melisande!" the some one sang, in a soft, half-mocking voice. She turned and looked up. "How do you do, Mr. Rutherford?" she said sedately.
She forgot Clarence again and began to sing softly under her breath, watching the ruffled water. "What are you thinking, Melisande?" asked Clarence softly. Joy lifted her wide innocent eyes and gave him a discreet version. "That, after all, this is a glade in Fairyland, and I am the princess, and you the dragon," she ended under her breath.
The fame of Claude Debussy is a plant of recent growth, and dates, so far as the general public is concerned, from the production of his 'Pelléas et Mélisande' in 1902, though for some years before he had been the idol of an intimate circle of adorers.
And, as if he wished to accentuate this antagonism, the author of Pelléas et Mélisande is now writing a Tristan, whose plot is taken from an old French poem, the text of which has been recently brought to light by M. Bédier. In its calm and lofty strain it is a wonderful contrast to Wagner's savage and pedantic, though sublime poem.
In Pelléas et Mélisande one finds no persistent leitmotifs running through the work, or themes which pretend to translate into music the life of characters and types; but, instead, we have phrases that express changing feelings, that change with the feelings.
Suddenly they cease their crying. Yniold calls to the shepherd. "Why do they not speak any more?" "Because," answers the shepherd, who is concealed from sight, "it is no longer the road to the fold." "Where are they going to sleep to-night?" cries the child. There is no answer, and he departs, exclaiming that he must find somebody to speak to. Pelléas enters, to keep his tryst with Mélisande.
In the theatre she blossoms forth, she is the lily of the stage. Young and inexperienced as I am, I have broken my heart over her several times. I could write a sonnet-sequence to her, yes, the fair, pale, tear-stained thing, white-robed, with her hair down her back; I could call her by a hundred names, in a hundred languages, Melisande, Elizabeth, Juliet, Butterfly, Phedre, Minnehaha, etc.
"I heard the crackling of dead leaves," insists Mélisande. "A-a-h! he is behind a tree!" she whispers. "Who?" "Golaud! he has his sword!" "And I have none!" cries Pelléas. "He does not know we have seen him," he cautions. "Do not stir; do not turn your head. He will remain there so long as he thinks we do not know he is watching us. He is still motionless. Go, go at once this way.
As Golaud rushes upon them and strikes down Pelléas, the Fate theme is declaimed by four horns in unison over string tremolos; and, as he turns and silently pursues the fleeing Mélisande through the forest, his Vengeance theme brings the act, by a rapid crescendo, to a crashing close.
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