Pelléas et Mélisande, Barbican Hall

There have long been rumours that Sir Simon Rattle is next in line to direct the London Symphony Orchestra, after his transformative tenure with the Berlin Philharmonic reaches its conclusion. With numerous appearances with the orchestra over the next year and a half, the great man himself is doing little to dispel rumours. Although every one of Rattle’s six LSO concerts in their 2015/16 season promises to be more than worthwhile, one in particular bursts with potential.
In January 2016, for two nights only, Rattle will conduct Britain’s finest symphonic ensemble in a semi-staged production of Pelléas et Melisandé (1902), Claude Debussy’s sole opera and a landmark of early twentieth-century music. After years of alienation from the musical pomposity of the Paris stage, Debussy finally found the seeds of a new operatic era in Maurice Maeterlinck’s 1892 play.
Full of dream-like symbolism, yet for Debussy containing “far more humanity” than the grimy naturalist stories popular at the time, Pelléas takes a simple story of doomed lovers and injects it with sumptuous imagery and lofty themes, all the while maintaining an enchanted, almost fairy tale atmosphere. While Wagner’s music bellows out over the libretto, Debussy’s glides like a delicate mist. Bold emotions are jettisoned in favour of ambiguity and uncertainty, and the text – one of the first to be in prose – avoids poetic bluster. There are very few arias, but rather a continuous interweaving of voices, evocative of early choral music. It is the luminous opposite of Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, supplanting the German’s bombast with a wholly new delicacy.
In the hands of Rattle and LSO, it looks certain that Debussy’s score will shine. The experienced cast – led by Christian Gerhaher, Gerald Finley and Magdalena Kozená, Rattle’s wife, in the starring role – are unlikely to disappoint. But what makes this production even more exciting is the involvement of Peter Sellars, opera’s reigning maverick, whose 1993 version gave Pelléas a hard-edged grit. Twenty-three years down the line, it will be fascinating to see how Sellars’ aesthetics have changed. If you only have time for one Rattle/LSO concert this season, book this one.