Jan Michiels & Inge Spinette - Lore Binon - Yves Saelens - Werner Van Mechelen

If we are to believe Olivier Messiaen, Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is the single greatest masterpiece of French music.

According to him, ‘never before [had] music delved this way into the realm of the unconscious’ or ‘the depth of the human emotions that are developed in [the piece]’. Messiaen hits the nail on the head: Pelléas is not about facts, but feelings. The opera walks precariously along the abysses of human desire. This held-in sense of danger is expressed even more strongly, if possible, in Marius Constant’s arrangement for chamber ensemble.

Far from the rhetoric of the big gesture, an aesthetics of subtlety rules here. Debussy and Maeterlinck speak the language of repressed emotion, the essence of which is revealed in ripples and gentle breezes.

Coproduction 30CC