The 77th Aldeburgh Festival opened this weekend with a commitment, according to the brochure, to “the forms of attention that music makes possible”. The attention economy being the issue de nos jours, a glance around Snape Maltings on opening night revealed a captive sample of perhaps the last generation able to fully immerse in an extended period of abstract concentration. In a three-week long festival featuring six world premieres, including a new percussion concerto by Tansy Davies and some eye-catching collaborations, it seems an odd choice to open with a semi-staging of Pelléas et Mélisande, Debussy’s problematic opera based on the symbolist drama of Maeterlinck. But Aldeburgh is nothing if not a celebration of the cerebral.
“No big story, no time, no place,” was how Debussy described a work he originally wanted performed behind a giant sheet of gauze to make it all the more mysterious. Happily, designer Vicki Mortimer has stuck to the cosy industrial chic to which the Maltings’ red bricks lend themselves, enhanced by the addition of some utility-era hanging lamps, an aesthetic answered in the boiler suits of attendant forest spirits. The narrative element of the work belongs to Maeterlinck’s dream world of ineffable longing: “Follow me. I’m lost too,” ought to be a red flag for Mélisande, whom the ageing Golaud has just picked up in the forest, but follow she does and soon finds herself in love with Golaud’s younger brother, Pelléas. Incarcerated in a household of indecisive men with anxieties about health and safety (“Don’t lean out of the window” is a recurring theme), Mélisande has little to do but say how unhappy she is, while the love rivals foment murderous jealousy. Unfortunately for everyone, the one lethal hazard that really is stalking the gloomy halls of this remote location is childbirth. And so it ends.
Gauze or no gauze, the impenetrability of this opera remains its problem, even with the lavish attentions of the BBC Scottish Orchestra and Aldeburgh’s featured artist, conductor Ryan Wigglesworth. Debussy’s veil of mystery is not lifted by Rory Kinnear’s minimally semi-staged production which, even with characters entering and exiting through the orchestra, cannot join the parallel worlds that are the drama and the score, which is more glimmering backdrop than narrative drive.
Given only emblematic things to do, the strong cast managed to maintain an impressive degree of dramatic tension with this dreadfully saggy libretto. Sophie Bevan’s rich, lustrous soprano had a hundred times more autonomy than the biddable Mélisande of the story. Gordon Bintner was a darkly sonorous Golaud, whose petulance brought on a distinctly nasal sneer. Jacques Imbrailo cut a complementary Pelléas, all fervent ardour one minute and fluting vulnerability the next. Dame Sarah Connolly’s poise as Geneviève was always going to be more than the stuff of legend.
It’s the orchestral kaleidoscope that really fascinates in this piece, and the Malting’s warm, resonant acoustic was the perfect place for it. Debussy’s hypnotic score is all reflected light, the movement of tides and the stilling of time for dreams, played out in gorgeous shifting harmonies, the whole-tone scales and modal reach that never quite resolves. The deep draw of cellos and basses as dark forces moved below the shimmering surface provided by the violins, the rich, golden swell of horns and brass and all those characteristic woodwind motifs: for all that the sound is an impression, Debussy was a details man, and so is Wigglesworth, who conducted the BBCSSO on their silveriest form from the dark foreboding of the forest floor to the bright lights of ecstasy. Hearing this watery score is rather like luxuriating in a hot tub under the stars. But an immersion lasting three and a half hours is not for the fainthearted.
Eleanor’s press trip was funded by Britten Pears Arts
