When Debussy completes the score, based on the eponymous symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck, of Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, the world of opera still abides by Richard Wagner and the upheaval he caused with Tristan und
Isolde. But Debussy decides to stand on the exact opposite side, and uses his new opus to preach a new aesthetic
creed. In depicting the forbidden love story between the timid Pelléas and the beautiful Mélisande, kept apart by an
unfortunate marriage, the French composer brings us back to the immortal legend of Tristan and Isolde, but this time
showing the world that the future of music could very well lie far away from Wagner’s overwhelming lyricism and outsized rhetoric. This new production, created by one of the rising stars of French stage direction Benjamin Lazar for the Malmö Opera (headed by Ingmar Bergman from 1952 to 1958), encapsulates all the different aspects of this mysterious work, from the oniric poetry invented by Maeterlinck and Debussy to the realism, poignant because openly simple and even mundane, of these profoundly human beings lost in a forest full of sound and symbols that will never let them escape. The young French conductor Maxime Pascal, the Orchestra of the Malmö Opera, and an almost all-French cast (among which the excellent Marc Mauillon and Jenny Daviet), bring forth with intelligence all the refinement and all the vitality this unique and fascinating score has to offer.

Cast:
- Pelléas: Marc Mauillon
- Mélisande: Jenny Daviet
- Golaud: Laurent Alvaro
- Arkel: Stephen Bronk
- Geneviève: Emma Lyren
- Yniold: Julie Mathevet
- Médecin, Berger: Stefano Olcese

Stage direction: Benjamin Lazar
Sets: Adeline Caron
Costumes: Alain Blanchot
Lighting design: Mael Iger
Assistant director: Elizabeth Calleo

HD recording at the Malmö Opera in May 2016
Directed for TV by Corentin Leconte
Produced by François Duplat / BelAir Media

Running time: 170 min.
Booklet: FR / ENG / GER
Original language: FR
Subtitles: FR / ENG / GER / SPA / KOR / JAP
Video: Color, 16/9, NTSC
Audio: PCM 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1