![\"Elena](\"http:\/\/www.musicalamerica.com\/mablogs\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/06\/whPelleasMelisande.jpg\")
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By ANDREW POWELL MUNICH \u2014 Noisy and sustained boos fell upon stage director Christiane Pohle<\/a> and her team after Pell\u00e9as et M\u00e9lisande<\/em> last night here in the Prinz-Regenten-Theater<\/a>. Though not uncommon in this epoch of Regietheater<\/em>, the intensity of the scorn for Bavarian State Opera<\/a>\u2019s new production was alarming coming from the dressy summer festival premiere crowd, many of whom were to adjourn to parties after the performance and whose circles deplore boorish behavior.<\/p>\n The fifteen scenes of Debussy\u2019s 1902 drame lyrique<\/em> to a Symbolist libretto by Maeterlinck unfold in Pohle\u2019s conception in a hotel lobby, with M\u00e9lisande as a receptionist. Scene I, where Golaud nominally loses his way while hunting in a forest, has him seated drinking at the hotel\u2019s bar. Scene XV, in which M\u00e9lisande will admit no guilt, takes place as a loose, group-therapy session.<\/p>\n The stationary lobby set, with hard, photo-realistic surfaces that look good on camera, is of a type costly to build and awkward to move, restricting scenic transformation in a way ordinary theatrical flats do not. After Golaud\u2019s forest, Maeterlinck and Debussy call for une appartement dans un ch\u00e2teau<\/em>, a setting devant le ch\u00e2teau, une fontaine dans le parc, une grotte, une des tours du ch\u00e2teau<\/em> (from which M\u00e9lisande\u2019s hair cascades down to Pell\u00e9as), les souterrains du ch\u00e2teau, une terrasse<\/em>, and so on, a visual feast potentially.<\/p>\n BR Klassik<\/a> carried the audio last night, preserving a musically imaginative performance. The Bavarian State Orchestra<\/a> conveyed ravishing nuances as well as the burliness in Debussy\u2019s score as led by Constantinos Carydis<\/a>. Markus Eiche<\/a> sang a lucid Golaud in properly projected French. Elena Tsallagova<\/a>\u2019s lovely tones proved ideal for M\u00e9lisande. As a mostly effective Pell\u00e9as, Elliot Madore<\/a> followed bizarre stage directions: on his first date with M\u00e9lisande, for instance, he sat with his knees together while she stood. Okka von der Damerau<\/a> inertly impersonated Genevi\u00e8ve. Peter Lobert<\/a> as the Doctor outsang Alastair Miles<\/a>\u2019 Arkel, while Hanno Eilers, 12, of the T\u00f6lzer Knabenchor<\/a> intoned Yniold bravely and drew the loudest applause.<\/p>\n Pell\u00e9as et M\u00e9lisande<\/em> becomes the latest of numerous flops for the company\u2019s impenitent Intendant<\/em> Nikolaus Bachler<\/a>, who insists on freedom for his stage directors \u2014 many of them grounded in straight theater and lacking flair for the visual and inter-disciplinary aspects of opera \u2014 without apparently recognizing his own duty to monitor quality during production development. Guillaume Tell<\/em> (Ant\u00fa Romero Nunes<\/a>) and V\u011bc Makropulos<\/em> (\u00c1rp\u00e1d Schilling<\/a>) have been mounted here with jaw-dropping ineptitude over the last twelve months. Earlier stagings of Medea in Corinto<\/em> (Hans Neuenfels<\/a>) and Saint Fran\u00e7ois d\u2019Assise<\/em> (Hermann Nitsch<\/a>) went speedily to the dumpsters and to costume sale, the probable fate of this Debussy.<\/p>\n Photo \u00a9 Wilfried H\u00f6sl<\/p>\n Related posts:
Published: June 29, 2015<\/span><\/p>\n
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