Anthony Negus’s conducting of Wagner has long been the chief musical glory of the Longborough festival. Now he has turned his attention to Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, an opera on which he assisted Pierre Boulez at the Welsh National Opera more than 30 years ago. The results are no less unmissable and authoritative as his Wagner.
From the dark chords of the opening bars, Negus conjures a fluently idiomatic reading of the translucent score. The pacing is beautifully controlled and Negus is always attentive to Debussy’s many tone colour changes and subtle dynamic contrasts. He draws some ravishing woodwind playing from the Longborough orchestra.
The opening of Jenny Ogilvie’s production is instantly gripping too, as the barely discernible figures of the lost Prince Golaud and the mysterious Mélisande encounter one another in the tenebrous depths of a murky wood. It sets the bar high for a darkly mysterious staging of an enigmatic work, in which Max Johns’s cubist suggestions of a castle supply a menacing background to the opera’s elusive events. The stage is often almost bare, with the characters facing outwards without direct interaction. Amid such discipline, Mélisande’s scene at the tower window, imaginatively translated on to a giant garden swing, has all the more impact for its impulsive movement.
Peter Small’s lighting plays a crucial stage role, occasionally bright and trained, blindingly so at the death of Pelléas, but more often suggestive and fleeting amid the weight of the shadows. A tiny, bright bulb flickers like a will-o’-the wisp, deepening the darkness behind. When the dark occasionally lifts, and Debussy’s orchestration opens radiantly with it, the illumination of the stage is like a breath of fresh air, but it is only momentary. It all adds up to one of the most accomplished, atmospheric and well-integrated Pelléas productions in years, and possibly the most completely successful show Longborough has mounted.
There are reservations, however. Three silent servants, whose entrance in the final scene is indeed signalled in the text, are given more extended roles as extras and scene shifters, including a memorably posed moment as the sleeping beggars in a cave. Though they never speak, surtitles twice give them inner thoughts, elevating them into an unspeaking chorus. This feels an otiose moment in a production where music, staging, lights and performances otherwise all support one another so sympathetically.
Among a strongly cast group of principals, Kateryna Kasper brings an ideal combination of soprano richness and soubrette brightness to Mélisande. Karim Sulayman’s light-voiced Pelléas sounds almost improvised in its conversational fluency, but his tenor flowers in moments of passion. Brett Polegato is an intense and intelligent Golaud. Julian Close brings sombre authority to King Arkel, Catherine Carby is a richly projected Geneviève and Nia Coleman, on stage almost throughout, is a brightly convincing Yniold.
• Until 10 July. Our reviewer attended the second performance.
