Variations on Pelléas

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Image courtesy of Liceu

The leading thread of this concert is provided by the play Pelléas et Mélisande, written in 1892 by the Belgian Symbolist poet Maurice Maeterlinck (1862-1949). It tells a tragic and poetical love story that inspired an unusual number of contemporary composers. Among them were Jean Sibelius, Claude Debussy, Gabriel Fauré and Arnold Schoenberg who used it as the base for their works ranging from symphonic poems to an opera.

In 1902, at the same time as Schoenberg was writing his symphonic poem, Debussy set about turning the play into an opera bearing the same title. The characters' ultimate fate recalls that of Romeo and Juliet or Tristan and Isolde, but the tale is shrouded in a symbolist aesthetic in which everything is suggested rather than stated. The works Fauré and Sibelius dedicated to the same story date from 1898 and 1905 respectively. 

The presence of Debussy's opera Pelléas et Mélisande on this season's opera bill gives Josep Pons, a specialist in turn-of-the-century European music, an opportunity to remind us of these other scores. He will act as our guide as we discover the different ways in which music can transform a given literary source.

Program

• G. Fauré, Pelléas et Mélisande, op. 80  
• J. Sibelius, Pelléas och Mélisande, op. 46  
• A. Schoenberg, Pelléas und Mélisande, op. 5

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