Opera as Oxymoron: Pelléas et Mélisande at the Met, by Larry Wallach

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Gerald Finley and Magdalena Kožená, Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera


Metropolitan Opera House
January 1, 2011

Claude Debussy
Pelléas et Mélisande
Libretto by Maurice Maeterlinck

Pelléas - Stéphane Dégout
Mélisande - Magdalena Kožená
Golaud - Gerald Finley
Arkel - Willard White
Geneviève - Felicity Palmer
Yniold - Neel Ram Nagarajan
Physician - Paul Corona
Shepherd - Donovan Singletary

Metropolitan Opera Orchestra
Conductor - Sir Simon Rattle

Production - Jonathan Miller
Stage Director - Paula Williams
Set designer - John Conklin
Costume designer - Clare Mitchell
Lighting designer - Duane Schuler

Perhaps 2011 will be the year of the oxymoron. Certainly having a Republican House with a Democratic Senate and administration feels oxymoronic enough without having a Tea Party within the Republican ranks to pile contradiction upon contradiction. It may be that such a tangle of cross-purposes will mute the stridency of our public discourse, and suggest that we must consider the contrary case before asserting our own point of view. If that is to be the character of the year to come, one can, with cautious optimism, hope that it will provide relief from the noisy mindlessness we have been subjected to in the preceding one. Seeing Debussy’s only completed opera on the first day of the new year prompts such hopes: Debussy was passionately committed to finding his truth within quietude and ambiguity.

Read the full review on the Berkshire Review, an international journal for the Arts!

Michael Miller