Composed in 1902 to a libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck, Pelléas et Mélisande Pelléas et Mélisande is the only completed opera by Debussy. Inspired by the legend of Tristan and Isolde and the character of Rapunzel in Brothers Grimm, Pelléas et Mélisande tells of the impossible love between Pelléas and Mélisande who is married to Pelléas’ eldest brother.
But Debussy's opera is primarily a confusing work that challenges the audience. Deliberately at odds with the vocal and symphonic conventions of opera, Pelléas et Mélisande seeks to overturn conventions in order to return to the essence of this art. The impressionist music of Debussy is therefore part of a quest for purity and symbolism, often including songs without melody or theme which reflect a character's soul and operate independently of the orchestral score.
The style of writing of the libretto adds to the overall lack of clarity. The opera, based on the Maeterlinck play of the same name, is a symbolist work par excellence, and in its style is both Gothic and dreamy. The novella is a prose in dialogue that mixes the mundane ("I was born on a Sunday. A Sunday at noon." Mélisande Act III, "I opened the window, it's too hot in the tower." Melisande, Act III) with the fantastical ("How large are our shadows tonight!" Mélisande Act IV, "Can you feel the rising smell of death?" Melisande, Act III).
However,Pelléas et Mélisande However, Pelléas et Mélisande is a work both of its time and of all time. This opera shocked with its first performances and yet was part of a trend harking back with affection to the medieval characteristics of the late nineteenth century which tended to emphasize the influence of Celtic, Germanic and Nordic tradition within Western culture. Romantic nationalism, with emblematic representatives like Akseli Gallen-Kallela, painted illustrations for legends such as for the Kalevala, the Finnish mythology, which sought to bring up to date the medieval folklore and Arthurian legends, as did the Symbolist painters Edgard Maxence and Puvis de Chavannes.
In music too there are references to a medieval flowering with Wagnerian opera(Tristan and Isolde, , The Ring of the Nibelungen, ...…) but also Le Roi Arthus, by Ernest Chausson, and many composers who made use of their national folk melodies such as Jean Sibelius and Bartók. Even today, the ethereal voice of Mélisande that ignores the orchestral score and the distant echo of symphonic writing touches us deeply and brings us back to the sources of operatic art.