Glyndebourne’s Pelléas et Mélisande

[Bax-of-Delights]

I was waiting on reviews of this production before making any decision as to wether I’d purchase any tickets. Looks to have been almost universally panned by critics (Independent being the exception although even that came with caveats). Once again Glyndebourne goes for Mittel Europe director and finds itself wheeling out a self-absorbed production (almost literally in the case of Peleas as the set is a replica of the Organ Room at Glyndebourne). When you have such a wonder as the Graham Vick production behind you why risk your finances (plenty of seats available for remaining performances and returns are probably piling in) with such poorly received material?
I’d be interested to read any feedback from readers who have attended. Dave2002 - did you go?

[Dave2002]

I’d be interested to read any feedback from readers who have attended. Dave2002 - did you go?

No - didn't plan on going at all this year, for various reasons. If you'd been encouraging me to go I might have changed my mind and tried to get a last minute ticket, but it seems you're persuading otherwise.

Is there anything really worth trying to pick up tickets for this year? There might just be time to fit one in - though it could be tricky.

We did go to Gounod's Romeo et Juliette at Grange Park Opera - West Horsley - last week. I agreed with some/most of the critics about the problems with the work and the production - but we enjoyed it a lot anyway. Juliette was excellent. The acoustics in that venue still sound very good to me. Also the temperature was bearable inside this year - have there been modifications to the ventilation - or was it just a fluke?

Otherwise it's been Cinema (Glyndebourne - Madame Butterfly - which I enjoyed a lot) and upcoming in a few weeks is Holland Park - some unusual one - can't remember which. Not trying Longborough this year either, though friends who went to Flying Dutchman said it was very good.

[Bax-of-Delights]

Busy season with Rosenkavalier already under the belt. Both my wife and I saw the same production a couple of years ago but we were certain that there had been changes - not to the good we felt.
Butterfly in a couple of week’s time
Saul in early August because we heard many good things about it
Vanessa just because it is unlikely we would ever have the chance to see it anywhere else - and I enjoy Barber’s vocal music.

[Belgrove]

Going later in the month - will steer clear of any reviews until after then. But what of the orchestral playing? CBSO didn't quite get it right the other week, although Jacques Imbrailo was very fine.

Vanessa in August.

There are a few returns surfacing for the remaining shows of the evergreen Giulio Cesare which we saw on Friday. Has to be one of the finest productions of any opera I have seen (several times). Took some opera novices who were gobsmacked. Anna Stephany as Sesto was sensational.

Glyndebourne has a carefully judged history for doing sophisticated vulgarity, which European directors generally don't get.

[Dave2002]

Busy season with Rosenkavalier already under the belt. Both my wife and I saw the same production a couple of years ago but we were certain that there had been changes - not to the good we felt.
Butterfly in a couple of week’s time
Saul in early August because we heard many good things about it
Vanessa just because it is unlikely we would ever have the chance to see it anywhere else - and I enjoy Barber’s vocal music.

You are now tempting me, though Saul and Vanessa will also be possible in cinemas. I know it's not as good that way, but sometimes it is very convenient. I'll look at our schedule and maybe might try to go to the real thing.

[bluestateprommer]

Even one Yank is getting in on the act, so to speak, with reviews, namely Zachary Woolfe from the NYT:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/02/arts/music/review-pelleas-glyndebourne-herheim.html

While it's a mixed review, it's a nuanced mixed review, where the connections to the history of Glyndebourne itself aren't so much self-absorption as curious parallels that Herheim has brought out between the opera and the history of Glyndebourne. Anyone who wants to go see it should do so, regardless of reviews.

[Dave2002]

Seems not so much mixed, but a review which doesn't indicate whether the reviewer liked it or not, or whether possible visitors would enjoy it, or would want to go. Did you go?

[Il Grande Inquisitor]

It wasn't Stefan Herheim's strongest piece, though to dismiss him as a "Mittel Europe director" is nonsense.

https://bachtrack.com/review-pelleas-melisande-herheim-gansch-chest-purves-glyndebourne-june-2018

[Belgrove]

Warning: spoiler alerts.

We should have known that trouble was ahead on learning that Stephan Herheim thought originally to stage Pelléas et Melisande within a space station (sic), but on having thought again, felt that adopting such an approach 'risked losing the focus on people'. What he presented precisely achieved that which he wished to avoid, a concept that turned characters into obscure thematic ciphers that run roughshod over the subtleties of the libretto, the story and the music. The interpretation is opaque, gratuitous, and makes something ugly and coarse of the most beautifully evanescent and subtle opera I know.

The score is awash with aural vistas of the sea (more so than La Mer) and to gloomy forests and dank caverns, yet we are prosaically entombed throughout within the Organ Room at Glyndebourne. One of the most erotically charged encounters in opera is the Rapunzel scene between P&M, here reduced to Pelléas attempting to entwine Melisande's hair into an artist's easel (substituting for a tower, and just about everything else that required a reference to something outdoors). The following unsettling scene when Goloud leads Pelléas to the rank cistern beneath the castle to threaten him is totally defused by their merely looking into a fireplace and a hole in the floor of the Organ Room. Bad stagecraft.

Goloud initially is a sympathetic character who rescues a damsel in distress, yet progresses via jealously to murder through gradual stages. It's his evolution that is the stuff of the drama. Here he was emotionally unstable from the first scene. His angerometer was already at 10 by the scene when Melisande is discovered to have lost her wedding ring, and fixed at 11 thereafter, with nowhere else to go, other than sexually abuse his son at the spying scene - a totally unnecessary distortion of Goloud's escalating despair and misinterpretation of events. The climactic love scene between P&M must be performed covertly in the night, so they are discovered by Goloud lurking in 'l'obscurité', (it's prototype is Tristan & Isolde after all), but they are in full view of everyone in the palace retinue and Goloud from the start of their encounter.

Musically it had much to admire, principally Ticciati's conducting of the LPO, providing a very beautiful yet theatrical account of what can seem a cool and uninvolving score in lesser hands. Brindley Sherratt as Arkël gave the most humane and sympathetic performance, which shows something was wrong with the way the three principals were used.

I apologise for the length of this and to present something primarily negative, but many people's first impression of this glorious work will have been irredeemably tainted by this wilful and distorting production. I doubt if Glyndebourne will be able to revive it.

My advice, for what it's worth, is to avoid all productions that enlist a dramaturg on the production team. If a director cannot sort things out for themselves, then they should not be trusted by the audience to be capable of doing their job