SubmittedFriday, 03 May 2019
opposed to the Bayreuth ideal
From a scenic point of view, Pelléas et Mélisande is also quite opposed to the Bayreuth ideal. The vast proportions–almost immoderate proportions–of the Wagnerian drama, its compact structure and the intense concentration of mind which from beginning to end holds these enormous works and their ideology together, and which is often displayed at the expense of the action and even the emotions, are as far removed as they can be from the French love of clear, logical, and temperate action. The little pictures of Pelléas et Mélisande, small and sharply cut, each marking without stress a new stage in the evolution of the drama, are built up in quite a different way from those of the Wagnerian theatre.
And, as if he wished to accentuate this antagonism, the author of Pelléas et Mélisande is now writing a Tristan, whose plot is taken from an old French poem, the text of which has been recently brought to light by M. Bédier. In its calm and lofty strain it is a wonderful contrast to Wagner’s savage and pedantic, though sublime poem.
But it is especially by the manner in which they conceive the respective relationships of poetry and music to opera that the two composers differ. With Wagner, music is the kernel of the opera, the glowing focus, the centre of attraction; it absorbs everything, and it stands absolutely first. But that is not the French conception. The musical stage, as we conceive it in France (if not what we actually possess), should present such a combination of the arts as go to make an harmonious whole. We demand that an equal balance shall be kept between poetry and music; and if their equilibrium must be a little upset, we should prefer that poetry was not the loser, as its utterance is more conscious and rational. That was Gluck’s aim; and because he realised it so well he gained a reputation among the French public which nothing will destroy. Debussy’s strength lies in the methods by which he has approached this ideal of musical temperateness and disinterestedness, and in the way he has placed his genius as a composer at the service of the drama. He has never sought to dominate Maeterlinck’s poem, or to swallow it up in a torrent of music; he has made it so much a part of himself that at the present time no Frenchman is able to think of a passage in the play without Debussy’s music singing at the same time within him.
But apart from all these reasons that make the work important in the history of opera, there are purely musical reasons for its success, which are of deeper significance still.[200] Pelléas et Mélisande has brought about a reform in the dramatic music of France. This reform is concerned with several things, and, first of all, with recitative.
[Footnote 200: That is for musicians. But I am convinced that with the mass of the public the other reasons have more weight–as is always the case.]
this was: Opposed To The Bayreuth Ideal
go to next chapter: Lully and Rameau
