#pelléas and mélisande

[thefugitivesaint]

Sigismund De Ivanowski (1875-1944), ''The Century Magazine'', Vol. 56, #1, May 1908

Miss Mary Garden as Mélisande in Debussy's ''Pelléas and Mélisande''

Source

[apaperswan]

Ok, I am the only one who became obsessed with Pelléas and Mélisande after listening to this?

For context: "Pelléas and Mélisande (French: Pelléas et Mélisande) is a Symbolist play by the Belgian playwright and author Maurice Maeterlinck. It's about the forbidden, doomed love of the title characters and was first performed in 1893.

The work never achieved great success on stage, apart from operatic setting by Claude Debussy, but was at the time widely read and admired by the symbolist literary elite, such as Strindberg and Rilke. It inspired other contemporary composers, like Gabriel Fauré, Arnold Schoenberg, Jean Sibelius, and Mel Bonis.

Synopsis: Golaud finds Mélisande by a stream in the woods. She has lost her crown in the water but does not wish to retrieve it. They marry, and she instantly wins the favor of Arkël, Golaud's grandfather and king of Allemonde, who is ill. She begins to be drawn to Pelléas, Golaud's brother. They meet by the fountain, where Mélisande loses her wedding ring. Golaud grows suspicious of the lovers, has his son Yniold spy on them, and discovers them caressing, whereupon he kills Pelléas and wounds Mélisande. She later dies after giving birth to an abnormally small girl. Source: Wikipedia.

A very interesting aspect is that it is a Symbolist play adapted numerous time, but especially by Debussy as an opera, that I'm sure Lestat has **convinced** Louis to watch 😄

Also on Wikipedia: "A brief summary of the play will concentrate best on Mélisande. At the beginning of the play she has just escaped from a failed marriage that has so traumatized her that she scarcely remembers either it or her past. She marries Golaud with no choice of her own, and remains essentially distant from him. The audience realize she is falling in love with Pelléas long before she does. On her deathbed she has quite forgotten her final meeting with Pelléas and his death, and dies without realizing that she is dying. This and the whole play—for none of the other characters are wiser—expresses a sense that human beings understand neither themselves nor each other nor the world. The problem is not simply human blindness, but the lack of a fixed and definable reality to be known. This is the Maeterlinck who paved the way for the plays of Samuel Beckett.

A key element in the play is the setting, whether visible in the stage scenery or described in the dialogue. The action takes place in an ancient, decaying castle, surrounded by deep forest, which only occasionally lets sunlight in, and with caverns underneath it that breathe infected air and are in danger of collapse. As numerous critics have pointed out, all this symbolizes the dominating power throughout the action of a destiny fatal to mankind. "

I just love how specific this is, how appropriate and how evocative the whole story is of Louis and Lestat, and I love how Louis does remember it and includes it in his Dreamstat version of it in Paris 🙈

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

with all due respect (which is none), amazon, pelléas et mélisande is not a fucking operetta

[mysterious-secret-garden]

Carlos Schwabe - Pelléas and Mélisande.

[majestativa]

We remember the words of Pelléas: “I played like a child with a thing I did not suspect. . . . I played in my dreams with destiny’s traps.”

Georgette Anderson, Black, Brown, & Beige: Surrealist Writings from Africa and the Diaspora

[lepetitdragonvert]

Pelléas et Mélisande by Maurice Maeterlinck

1924

Artist : Carlos Schwabe

[awindinthelantern]

Costume for Ganna Walska as Mélisande, 'Pelléas et Mélisande', 1931

designed Erté (Romain de Tirtoff) (Russian, active France and United States, 1892-1990)

Silk voile Center back length: 95 in. (241.3 cm) Purchased with funds provided by Rita and Ross Barrett, Costume Council Fund, and gift of Anna Bing Arnold (M.87.80.31) Costume and Textiles

[doyouknowthisopera]

[opera-ghosts]

On the occasion of the premiere of the opera

“Pelléas et Mélisande” by Claude Debussy on April 30, 1902 in Paris, this special issue of the magazine “Le Théatre” was published.

Here we see the first two singers of these roles. Jean Périer and MARY GARDEN.

[kingdomoftyto]

Not counting just refreshing myself on the stuff I was already familiar with (first two books + movie), I've now read two books, two scripts, a graphic novel, and the synopses of no fewer than three operas, AND I've watched an entire goddamn opera, all thanks to the new AMC show.

Also I was going to pick up the next book in the series while I was out today and the only reason I didn't is because it wasn't in stock at the bookstore

[apaethy]

you'll fumble each other, like impotent lovers no pelléas, no mélisande come to me

INTERIVEW WITH THE VAMPIRE | S02E03

[rosetintved]

your pelléas, my mélisande

[infinitelytheheartexpands]

i love falling asleep to debussy

[mysterious-secret-garden]

Poster for the prèmiere of Claude Debussy and Maurice Maeterlinck's Pelléas and Mélisande at the Théâtre de l'Opéra-Comique, 1902.

[breha]

Is Lestat's relationship to Claudia ever that of an uncle? What other reason might there be for Claudia to call one of the men "Daddy" and the other "Uncle"? Consider the setting.

Why might the filmmakers have chosen to include references to A Doll's House, Madame Bovary, Marriage In A Free Society by Edward Carpenter, and Pelléas et Mélisande? What themes, if any, do these references reinforce?

Claudia calls Louis "the housewife" and Louis later describes himself as "ignoring all other duties of the role Claudia had mocked me for... the unhappy housewife." What does this indicate about attitudes towards gender and sexuality in the society in which the characters live? What is the significance of the word "role" here in relation to Lestat's promise in the first episode to free Louis from "all these roles you conform to"?

When Claudia first introduces the idea of reconceptualizing her relationship to Louis and Lestat as a sister, what does Lestat's reaction suggest about his opinion? In the following episode, when Lestat calls Claudia "sister, daughter, infant death," what is his tone?

In the context of the story, what is a "maker"? What kind of status in the household does Lestat believe a maker should have?

Does becoming vampires allow the characters to escape the social structures of the world around them, or do they remain trapped? In what ways, if any, does sociocultural context in regards to gender, race, sexuality, and family influence the characters and their relationships?

The article "Undoing Feminism: From the Preoedipal to Postfeminism in Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles" by Janice Doane and Devon Hodges argues that the novel Interview With The Vampire "depends on an oedipal paradigm" and says that "Rice sees the oedipal moment as beginning with the father's embrace of the girl child in a patriarchal order that so restricts her possibilities for development [...] that she develops murderous rages against the father. Freud calls the oedipal stage 'a haven, a refuge' for the girl; Rice shows it to be a coffin." Do you think AMC's Interview With The Vampire is engaging with this idea? Why or why not?

[lizardkingeliot]

i hope daniel hart knows when he wrote the lyrics ruin each other like star-crossed lovers your pelléas my mélisande he physically altered the structure of my brain