Pelléas and Mélisande

Pelléas et Mélisande is a play by Maurice Maeterlinck about the forbidden, doomed love of the title characters. It was premiered on 16 May 1893 in Paris at the Théâtre des Bouffes and is considered a masterpiece of the theater of symbolism.

Action

Prince Golaud gets lost on a trip in the forest, where he met the beautiful and mysterious Mélisande. He takes them as his wife on the gloomy water castle of his grandfather Arkel, on the Mélisande does not feel good. Only Golaud brother Pelléas, with whom she shared a deep friendship and almost supernatural love, they can cheer. This aroused jealousy Golaud. In anger he kills Pelléas, Mélisande but is so shaken that she also died.

Analysis

Pelléas et Mélisande is indeed more rooted in reality and realism as Princesse Maleine of 1889, but is considered Maeterlinck's symbolist masterpiece. The sparse and simple action seems mysterious, the more complex figures are ambiguous. The events are determined by yearnings and forebodings. Social and moral issues rarely discussed the piece.

Musical settings

The play served as the basis of a number of musical works:

• Incidental music by Gabriel Fauré (1898, later also as a suite for orchestra)
• Opera by Claude Debussy, premiere on April 30, 1902 at the Opéra -Comique in Paris, see Pelléas et Mélisande ( opera )
• Symphonic Poem by Arnold Schoenberg, premiere on January 25, 1905 in the Great Hall of the Musikverein in Vienna, see Pelleas and Melisande ( Schoenberg )

Expenditure

• Pelléas et Mélisande. Brussels 1892.
• Pelléas et Mélisande, in Théâtre complet. Geneva 1979.
• Pelleas and Melisande, translated by G. Stockhausen. Berlin 1897.
• Pelleas and Melisande, translated by F. v. Opole - Bronikowski. Reclam, Stuttgart, 1972. ISBN 3-15-009427-5.
• Pelleas and Melisande, translated by S. Gross, in The early pieces. Munich 1983.