Opera at home

CDs

PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE

DEBUSSY LSO: 0790

This Dec. 2016 live recording from London’s Barbican Centre documents a semi-staged performance (directed by Peter Sellars) that had first been mounted with the same cast a year earlier at Berlin’s Philharmonie, home of the Berlin Philharmonic. The link is conductor Sir Simon Rattle, who this June relinquishes his post as Artistic Director and Chief Conductor in Berlin to take over as Artistic Director of the London Symphony Orchestra. This is the first of what will likely be a distinguished series of releases on LSO’s house label with Rattle at the helm.

It’s a supple and subtle performance, and one of its strongest assets is the consistently high standard of the orchestral playing. In Berlin, Rattle played around with the orchestra placement (clarinets among low strings, for example) to echo suggestions Debussy himself had made. I can’t tell from this CD how things were done in London, but the sonic stage of the issue has great clarity and depth, enveloping you in the music in a most engaging way. The only audible sign to me that this was staged was in some heavy breathing for dramatic effect at one point on the part of Gerald Finley’s Golaud.

Finley’s contribution here is outstanding—to the point where the issue’s title might just as well be Golaud et Mélisande. As Pelleas, baritone Christian Gerhaher has the right vocal heft and sings eloquently, but the characterization is tonally and dramatically monochromatic, and his handling of the text sounds stiff. By comparison, Finley’s fluent and clear diction (to be fair, he’s the closest to a native French speaker in the international cast) is mediated in singing that draws on a huge palette of vocal colouring and dynamic shading. Even without benefit of seeing Sellars’ staging, you can follow the arc of Golaud’s painful journey vividly.

He’s well partnered by Magdalena Kožená, who,