Pelleas Et Melisande

The first comprehensive guide to Pelléas et Mélisande, Debussy's only completed opera, this book is written by three of the leading authorities on French music of the period. As a background to the opera Richard Langham Smith discusses the play, by the Belgian dramatist Maeterlinck, and considers its literary roots. David Grayson then traces the genesis and composition of the opera, examining also the sketches and rejected versions in order to illuminate Debussy's compositional strategies. A detailed synopsis by Roger Nichols, which considers carefully Debussy's musical response to the text, forms a central chapter. The book then moves on to consider more detailed aspects of the style and language of the opera. The relationship between symbols and musical motives forms the basis of a chapter by Richard Langham Smith, and a subsequent chapter by him considers the themes of darkness and light and the key-schemes used to portray them. Two chapters by Roger Nichols on the various performances since 1902 and on the ideas of interpreters and commentators complete the text. The book concludes with a detailed bibliography and a discography.

In this guide to Pelleas and Melisande, Maeterlinck's original play is reprinted in full, so that the opera lover can read the scenes that Debussy did not set to music. Hugh Macdonald's much praised English translation is published here for the first time, with an essay uncovering the musical roots of Pelleas and Melisande and illustrating its importance to the music of the twentieth century. Alain Raitt, author of several studies of symbolist writers, evaluates Maeterlinck's status as a dramatist, and Roger Nichols analyses the score. Proust's short pastiche of the opera and Arthur Symons's review of the first English performances challenge us to come to terms with this eternally intriguing masterpiece.Contents: Something Borrowed, Something New, Hugh Macdonald; A Musical Synopsis, Roger Nichols; Maeterlinck and the Theatre, Alan Raitt; Profound or Pretentious?, Nicholas John; Pelleas et Melisande: text by Maurice Maeterlinck; Pelleas and Melisande: English Translation by Hugh Macdonald

The colourful lives of the three divas who made Debussy's Mélisande their own.

One of Maeterlinck's most attractive plays, Pelleas et Melisande (1892) formed the libretto of Claude Debussy's opera of the same name.

Schoenberg's theory of "composition with twelve tones" dominated international composition through most of the 20th century — and this edition collects the first steps of the composer's revolution. Pelleas und Melisande (1902) reveals Schoenberg's expanding chromatic language while Five Orchestral Pieces renounces motivic connections as well as tonality.

This is a book based on Maurice Polydore's play. From 1932, Marie Bernard Maeterlinck was known as Count Maeterlinck. He was a Fleming-born Belgian dramatist, poet, and writer who wrote in French. Charles Alfred Byrne has translated this work. The narrative begins when Golaud discovers Mélisande on the side of a wooded river. He had lost his crown in the ocean but refused to retrieve it. They married, and he soon gained the heart of Arkl, Golaud's grandpa and sick King of Allemonde. He becomes interested in Pelleas, Golaud's brother. They came together by the fountain, where Mélisande had misplaced her wedding ring. Golaud grows suspicious of the lovers, has his son Yniold spy on them, and tracks them down when they are petting, where he murders Pelléas and injures Mélisande. She died later after giving birth to an odd baby girl.