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The Guardian
02-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Pelléas et Mélisande review – Longborough's staging is accomplished and atmospheric
Anthony Negus's conducting of Wagner has long been the chief musical glory of the Longborough festival. Now he has turned his attention to Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, an opera on which he assisted Pierre Boulez at the Welsh National Opera more than 30 years ago. The results are no less unmissable and authoritative as his Wagner. From the dark chords of the opening bars, Negus conjures a fluently idiomatic reading of the translucent score. The pacing is beautifully controlled and Negus is always attentive to Debussy's many tone colour changes and subtle dynamic contrasts. He draws some ravishing woodwind playing from the Longborough orchestra. The opening of Jenny Ogilvie's production is instantly gripping too, as the barely discernible figures of the lost Prince Golaud and the mysterious Mélisande encounter one another in the tenebrous depths of a murky wood. It sets the bar high for a darkly mysterious staging of an enigmatic work, in which Max Johns's cubist suggestions of a castle supply a menacing background to the opera's elusive events. The stage is often almost bare, with the characters facing outwards without direct interaction. Amid such discipline, Mélisande's scene at the tower window, imaginatively translated on to a giant garden swing, has all the more impact for its impulsive movement. Peter Small's lighting plays a crucial stage role, occasionally bright and trained, blindingly so at the death of Pelléas, but more often suggestive and fleeting amid the weight of the shadows. A tiny, bright bulb flickers like a will-o'-the wisp, deepening the darkness behind. When the dark occasionally lifts, and Debussy's orchestration opens radiantly with it, the illumination of the stage is like a breath of fresh air, but it is only momentary. It all adds up to one of the most accomplished, atmospheric and well-integrated Pelléas productions in years, and possibly the most completely successful show Longborough has mounted. There are reservations, however. Three silent servants, whose entrance in the final scene is indeed signalled in the text, are given more extended roles as extras and scene shifters, including a memorably posed moment as the sleeping beggars in a cave. Though they never speak, surtitles twice give them inner thoughts, elevating them into an unspeaking chorus. This feels an otiose moment in a production where music, staging, lights and performances otherwise all support one another so sympathetically. Among a strongly cast group of principals, Kateryna Kasper brings an ideal combination of soprano richness and soubrette brightness to Mélisande. Karim Sulayman's light-voiced Pelléas sounds almost improvised in its conversational fluency, but his tenor flowers in moments of passion. Brett Polegato is an intense and intelligent Golaud. Julian Close brings sombre authority to King Arkel, Catherine Carby is a richly projected Geneviève and Nia Coleman, on stage almost throughout, is a brightly convincing Yniold. Until 10 July. Our reviewer attended the second performance.
Telegraph
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Telegraph
Pelléas et Mélisande, Longborough Festival, review: Opera at its most intoxicating
In the wake of their recent small-scale stagings of Wagner's Ring cycle, under the outstanding musical direction of Wagner supremo Anthony Negus, it makes sense for him to tackle Debussy. After all, the French composer's 1902 operatic adaptation of Maurice Maeterlinck's play was profoundly influenced by his experience of Wagner's music-drama. Now, in doing so successfully, Longborough have demonstrated a way to move forward. Heavy with symbolism, the story of Debussy's intoxicating opera is essentially a simple love triangle in which the developing, overwhelming love of Pelléas and Mélisande threatens her enigmatic marriage to Pelléas's half-brother Golaud and leads, in the end, to the murder of Pelléas and the death of Mélisande. But around this swirls a host of allusive episodes linked by Debussy's unique through-composed score, a continuous narrative of suppressed passion and lurking danger with no conventional operatic arias or ensembles. Picking up on the frequent references in the text to light and dark, Jenny Ogilvie's staging (designer Max Johns, lighting Peter Small) is dominated by lights with an alarming life of their own: a moving neon strip for the pool by which Golaud and Mélisande first meet, swinging spotlights across the stage, dazzling crossbeams for moonlight, an illuminated swing on which Mélisande becomes entangled with Pelléas. However, this becomes overdone towards the end, as the equipment has to be dragged on and off stage by silent servants, while the concept of Mélisande's baby portrayed as a light should be rethought. But all this frames a perfectly intelligible telling of the story, against a threatening moving back wall of concealed steps and hiding places, where the young Yniold (the excellent Nia Coleman), Golaud's child by his first marriage, can constantly lurk unobserved, and then be used by his jealous father to spy on the lovers. As Golaud, lost at the beginning of the opera, despairing at the end, Brett Polegato captures perfectly the intensity of Debussy's writing but also its restraint. There is strong support from Julian Close's sonorous Arkel and Pauls Putnins's disturbing Doctor. The central couple are not perfectly matched: Karim Sulayman's Pelléas is well sculpted, the words crystal clear, but there is just not enough voice to sustain the role. But Ukrainian-German soprano Kateryna Kasper as Mélisande is an outstanding discovery here, with a voice fuller and richer than we may be used to in this role, but wonderfully rounded, full of anxiety, and heart-rending at her death, prostrate in a glass box (recalling the sleeping Tilda Swinton at the Serpentine all those years ago). Mélisande's hair is not long, there is no tall tower from which to drape it: our imaginations have to work overtime to conjure up these scenes, but Negus realises Debussy's storytelling precisely, especially in the vivid interludes. At first I feared he would be too overtly dramatic, and it is true that there is an element of translucence and stasis missing here. But the orchestral playing is very fine, and bodes well for Longborough's future expansion of the repertory.
The Guardian
20-02-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
A night with the Melbourne opera
A raised stage, orchestra pit and tiered seating bank were built into the Royal Exhibition Building, which has been a part of Melbourne's culture for 140 years. Costumes, designed by Karine Larché, are hung up backstage. Audiences experience a 4.5-hour production of Wagner's epic comedy, with multiple intervals across the afternoon and evening and themed catering. Internationally acclaimed Wagner mastreo, Anthony Negus, mid performance. A member of the chorus getting ready backstage. Melbourne Opera describes Die Meistersinger as 'central to understanding Wagner's ideas on the role of music in society'. The performance space was specifically designed to showcase the intricate paint and plasterwork of the recently restored Royal Exhibition Building. James Egglestone, performing as the young knight Walther von Stolzing, alongside Lee Abrahmsen as Eva Pogner. Lee Abrahmsen, as Eva, looks on from the wings. Conductor Anthony Negus takes in the room during a quiet moment before the show. Negus conducting the orchestra, with past collaborator Suzanne Chaundy as director. The orchestra warms up and tunes before the performance. Melbourne Opera has regularly presented works by Richard Wagner including Ring Cycle in Bendigo (2023), Rheingold (2021) and Die Valkyrie (2022). The opera is set in 16th-century Nuremberg and revolves around a guild of amateur poets and musicians called the Mastersingers. James Egglestone brings Von Stolzing to life. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is unique among Wagner's work as the only comedy in his mature operas. Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg is the only mature Wagner opera based on an entirely original story, and in which no supernatural or magical powers or events feature. The set for the Melbourne spectacle was designed by Andrew Bailey. The chorus waiting backstage for the final performance. The chorus entering the stage for the final performance. Four performances of Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg take place at the Royal Exhibition Building between 16 and 22 February.
