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Bass

Brindley Sherratt

Arkel

Baritone

Jacques Imbrailo

Pelleas

Bass-baritone

Kyle Ketelsen

Golaud

Charles Dekeyser

Doctor

Soprano

Corinne Winters

Melisande

Mezzo-soprano

Yvonne Naef

Genevieve

Conductor

Alain Altinoglu

Stage director

Dmitri Tcherniakov

Set designer

Costume designer

Elena Zaitseva

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Gleb Filshtinsky

Chorus master

Jürg Hämmerli

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Beate Breidenbach

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Tieni Burkhalter

Opernhaus Zürich

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Chor der Oper Zürich

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Philharmonia Zürich

Zusatzchor der Oper Zürich

SoprAlti der Oper Zurich

French

Pelléas et Mélisande -  (Pelléas and Mélisande)

Zurich

Switzerland

Opernhaus

Pelléas et Mélisande by C. Debussy, from Oper Zürich, performed at Zurich Opera House, 2016. Directed by Dimitry Tcherniakov, conductor Alain Altinoglu, starring Jacques Imbrailo, Corinne Winters, Kyle Ketelsen, Brindley Sherratt, Yvonne Naef, Damien Göritz, Charles Dekeyser, Father of Pelléas. Performed in French and Subtitled in English, French, German and Spanish.

Alain Altinoglu conducts the Philharmonia Zürich, Zusatzchor Opernhaus Zürich and SoprAlti der Oper Zürich in a performance of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, an opera in five acts to the French libretto from Maurice Maeterlinck's play. It was premiered at the in Paris by the Opéra-Comique in 1902. The plot concerns a love triangle; Prince Golaud finds Mélisande, a mysterious young woman. After marrying her he brings her back to the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel, where Mélisande becomes attached to Golaud’s younger half-brother Pelléas. Main soloists are Brindley Sherratt (Arkel), Jacques Imbrailo (Pelléas), Kyle Ketelsen (Golaud) and Corinne Winters (Mélisande). Directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov and recorded at the Opernhaus Zürich in 2016.

Iconoclast Dmitri Tcherniakov, four-time winner of Russia’s prestigious Golden Mask award, is one of the most exciting directors working today, adroitly recontextualizing canonical works and inciting audiences to engage with familiar material in unfamiliar ways. A year before his 2017 staging of Carmen reframed the action as a roleplaying exercise for a man suffering from sexual dysfunction, he tackled Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, “the masterpiece of French symbolism” (Grove Music), from a different psychological angle.

In this strikingly modern 2016 production from the Zurich Opera House, Tcherniakov transposes the opera’s intrigue from forest and castle to living room and psychiatric office. The love story of the original work remains riveting, but Tcherniakov brings an unexpected psychological element to his mise en scène, with Prince Golaud as a psychiatrist and Mélisande as a young woman suffering from PTSD. You’ve never seen Pelléas like this!

Composed after Maeterlinck’s eponymous play, Debussy’s opera tells the tragic story of a love triangle: two noble half brothers, Golaud and Pelléas, and the enigmatic Mélisande, who comes into their lives unexpectedly after a tremendous and undisclosed personal calamity. In his new Zurich production Dmitri Tcherniakov chose to leave the fairy kingdom behind and focus on the complex issues around the heroine’s post-traumatic syndrome. Golaud is cast as a hands-on psychotherapist, who studies widescreen video clips to study patients’ cognitive behaviours… Corinne Winters is Mélisande, Jacques Imbrailo sings Pelléas, Kyle Ketelsen is Golaud, and the Philharmonia Zürich is directed with great insight and integrity by Alain Altinoglu.

This new Pelléas et Mélisande from the Opernhaus Zürich should be remembered as one of Dmitri Tcherniakov’s most innovative production. Forget the fountains, the caverns, the forest, the castles and the towers : here, the density of Maurice Maeterlinck’s and Claude Debussy’s symbolism becomes the starting point of an analytical journey into the human mind : it is now the psychoanalyst, ‘‘doctor’’ Golaud, who has to uncover the secrets of Melisande, an unfortunate and traumatized creature he brings home, and whose silence and puzzling attitude eventually bring him on the verge of insanity.

Pelléas et Mélisande Debussy

Public

Pelléas and Mélisande

German

English

Approved

Opera | C. Debussy : Pelléas et Mélisande, Opernhaus Zürich

Pelleas et Melisande

This new Pelléas et Mélisande from the Opernhaus Zürich should be remembered as one of Dmitri Tcherniakov’s most innovative production.…

In his only completed opera, premiered in Paris in 1902, Debussy wanted "to create music for the inexpressible, which emerges as if from a shadow into which it returns from time to time". Sometimes this impressionistically dazzling music, captivating with its very own orchestral colors, opens up the dream of beauty and love, sometimes it is an expression of stifled fear of death - and at the moment of Mélisande's confession of love it falls completely silent.

For Pelléas et Mélisande , Dmitri Tcherniakov returns to the opera house as director and set designer, having become known in Zurich for his impressively dense Jenůfa from 2012. Alain Altinoglu is the musical director. The eponymous couple embody the young American soprano Corinne Winters and the South African baritone Jacques Imbrailo, both of whom are making their debut at the opera house.

Pelléas et Mélisande
Golaud trifft eines Tags auf Mélisande, ein geheimnisvolles Mädchen, das offenbar Schreckliches erlebt hat. Zwar erfährt Golaud weder den Grund für Mélisandes Trauma, noch erzählt sie ihm von ihrer Herkunft. Dennoch übt sie grosse Faszination auf Golaud aus. Er nimmt sie heimlich zur Frau und bringt sie nach Hause zu seiner Familie. Glück gibt es hier jedoch nicht, denn es herrschen Kälte, Dunkelheit und Schweigen. Als Mélisande Golauds jüngerem Halbbruder Pelléas begegnet, nimmt die Katastrophe ihren Lauf: Golaud muss erkennen, dass Mélisande mehr als Freundschaft für Pelléas empfindet, und er rast vor Eifersucht...

In seiner einzigen vollendeten Oper, uraufgeführt 1902 in Paris, wollte Debussy «Musik für das Unausdrückbare schaffen, die wie aus einem Schatten hervortritt, in den sie von Zeit zu Zeit zurückkehrt». Mal öffnet sich diese impressionistisch schillernde, durch ganz eigene Orchesterfarben bestechende Musik dem Traum von Schönheit und Liebe, mal ist sie Ausdruck erstickter Todesangst – und im Moment des Liebesgeständnisses von Mélisande verstummt sie ganz.

Für Pelléas et Mélisande kehrt Dmitri Tcherniakov als Regisseur und Bühnenbildner zurück ans Opernhaus, in Zürich bekannt geworden durch seine beeindruckend dichte Jenůfa von 2012. Die musikalische Leitung hat Alain Altinoglu. Das titelgebende Paar verkörpern die junge amerikanische Sopranistin Corinne Winters und der südafrikanische Bariton Jacques Imbrailo, die beide erstmals am Opernhaus zu hören sind.

Deutsch

Pelléas and Mélisande by Debussy, From (2016/2016), Directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov,, Conductor Alain Altinoglu, Opernhaus, Zurich, Switzerland

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