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Culture Opera

Lush Life

PELLEAS ET MELISANDE (Canadian Opera Company). To May 24. 416-363-8231. See listings. Rating: NNN


A fairy tale with echoes of Rapunzel and Camelot, Claude Debussy’s only opera, Pelléas Et Mélisande, is an often ravishing piece of orchestral music. Too bad it’s not a stronger piece of theatre.

The two title characters are locked in a love-and-jealousy triangle that also involves Golaud, Pelléas’s half-brother, who’s married to Mélisande, the mysterious woman he’s found wandering in a forest. Set mostly in the shadow-and-light kingdom ruled by Arkel, the opera plays out to an ­expectedly tragic conclusion.

Director Nicholas Muni does what he can to energize the mostly static piece. Dani Lyne’s gorgeous design (a blasted heath of a landscape, cos­tumes that play with black and white, red and gold), effectively lit by Thomas C. Hase, makes a powerful statement on its own.

The singing is also evocative, Russell Braun and Isabel Bayrakdarian as the title figures sensual in their scenes together – the opera’s best moments. Pavlo Hunka makes a rightly gruff-voiced Golaud – in this production the final tragedy becomes his – and Richard Wiegold gives Arkel the ­gravitas of a benevolent old ruler.

But the music’s slow-flowing tidal movement takes us nowhere, failing to draw us into a gripping drama. The characters are always cool and at an emotional distance from the audience. Conductor Jan ­Latham-Koenig draws lush sounds from the orchestra, but those sounds could as effectively be heard in concert.

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