[AUDIO PLUS DEAD VIDEO LINKS] If you lived in Paris in 1902 and picked up any one of the many daily newspapers you would have read the following on or about May 1 of that year: Some said it was the musical event of the greatest importance. Others said disrespectfully that it was just a practical joke. (There is) the power of the orchestral sonorities, along with monotnous psalm-singing. Today or tomorrow Debussy's score will be recognized for what it is. It's a matter of time, just a little time. You must go see this work, for it represents a type that will probably be unique Eventually, even the Chicago Tribune weighed in All of the artists were excellent, but it is Melisande who takes hold of you. Claude Debussy's opera Pelleas et Melisande has been considered the [caption id="attachment_11843" align="alignright" width="141" caption="Claude Debussy (1862-1918)"][/caption] UN/opera or Uber/opera since its first performance, at the Opera-comique in Paris on April 30, 1902. Melsiande had been created by the Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck in his play of the same title published in 1893. Maeterlinck, the father of symbolism on the stage, the master of word painting where words did not always follow their literal meaning, the writer who blurred reality just enough and who worked in the 'timeless' sense of drama, became a sensation with the first staged production of his Pelleas. The play and the opera are both set in the mythical kingdom of Allemonde, in a time gone by. Melisande, one of the wives of Bluebeard, has escaped a life of rape and torture and is found in a lonely wood by Prince Golaud. The prince marries her and takes her home to his sad, crumbling kingdom, a place of darkness, of great trees and caves , and occasional bursts of sunlight and the sea. Melisande and Golaud's young half brother Pelleas find a mutual attraction. Pelleas is eventually killed by Golaud, and Melisande dies after giving birth to a daughter. All of this is expressed in sparse, if direct language where the very silences between the characters seems like the protagonist. Pelleas is about a silent world, interrupted. Gillian Opstad has written a new book, Debussy's Melisande that 00000178-6a23-ddab-a97a-6a3b59110000examines both the play and the opera through the lives of three women. Georgette Leblanc (1869-1941) was a Belgian actress and singer who was Maeterlinck's mistress for many years. She claimed to be the author's muse and the inspiration for Melisande herself. It was Leblanc who performed the play on the grounds of her home in France, and she later sang the opera in Boston. Mary Garden (1874-1967) was Debussy's first Melisande. Maggie Teyte (1888-1976) was the second, inheriting the role in Paris when Mary left for America in 1908. Of the three, Mary had the most sensational career and Maggie did very well with some stops and starts. Both were professionally active for over [caption id="attachment_11835" align="alignright" width="105" caption="Mary Garden, Debussy's first Melisande"]00000178-6a23-ddab-a97a-6a3b59120000[/caption] thirty years. Maggie Teyte gave her last recitals, her voice little impaired in 1955 and the age of 67. Mary Garden knew well how to court publicity and was a favorite of the American press until she long after she retired from singing. (Lecture tours and a sensational if fictitious autobiography kept her busy at her 80th birthday). She was "good copy" complete with her views of giving women the vote (she was for it) marriage (against) and lovers (So-so. 'I had little passion for men and no need"). Her performances onstage were deliberately provocative. One critic wrote of her Salome "Miss Garden wallowed around like a feline on a bed of catnip." She said later that her compatriot Andrew Carnegie disapproved of Charpentier's Louise -Mary's first big success in 1901-"because he disapproved of free love. But he did like Faust." In fact, Mary was thrown on stage for the first time of her life mid performance of Louise in Paris, and the next morning she was famous. "I was never a bit nervous in my life" she told reporters. "And I have no patience with people who are." It took some sangfroid indeed to be the first Melisande. Georgette Leblanc [caption id="attachment_11837" align="alignright" width="108" caption="Georgette Leblanc with Maurice Maeterlinck"]00000178-6a23-ddab-a97a-6a3b59130000[/caption] expected to be given the role-she was sleeping with the playwright after all. Albert Carre of the Opera-comique dismissed Georgette following her "shocking" portrayal of Carmen (where was his knack for publicity?) Maeterlinck stormed off saying that music mattered not at all to him and that Debussy could do what he wanted. What's between the notes in Debussy's score can be as rich and as evocative as the text and notes themselves. Nothing like this had been attempted before in the Paris beginning to recover from Wagner. One of Opstad's many interesting points is Debussy's approval of Mary Garden's Scots accent, making her Melisande more of an outsider than ever before. Claude Achille Debussy (1862-1918) was large, randy and seemingly [caption id="attachment_11839" align="alignright" width="81" caption="Maggie Teyte c. 1901"]00000178-6a23-ddab-a97a-6a3b59140000[/caption] dangerous. He approved of Mary Garden at once. "Je n'ai rien a lui dire" he said after the early rehearsal. "I have nothing to tell her." Here's Mary singing Melisande song in the Tower, from Act III, recorded in Paris a year after the premiere. What I did not expect from this clip are the scenes from Mary's 1917 film of Thais, shot at Samuel Goldwyn's estate in Fort Lee, New Jersey in the winter of 1917. The movie was a disaster, a joke. It comes AFTER the singing in this clip thankfully. Don't be distracted from the clear of beauty of Mary's voice, and its almost childlike simplicity, recorded 107 years ago: [youtube 3sj-EoGT3b8 490 344] Mary remains a favorite among opera lovers over forty years after her death. There are recordings, films (funny or not) scandal (faked or not) and her very real and important accomplishments in French opera: Melisande, Carmen, Faust, Le jongleur de Notre Dame, Cleopatre, not to mention Salome (in French), Tosca (French or Italian as the mood took her) and Fiora in Montemezzi's L'amore dei tre re (Italian). She said the one regret of her life was not singing Kundry in Wagner's Parsifal, and Virgil Thomson wanted her for his opera with Gertrude Stein, Four Saints in Three Acts. Richard Strauss hoped she would sing Octavian in Der Rosenkavalier, but Mary, not missing a beat said, "It would have bored me to make love to a woman." Opstad's book brings Georgette Leblanc back to life. She was considered [caption id="attachment_11845" align="alignright" width="65" caption="Georgette Leblanc as Carmen. A scandal!"]00000178-6a23-ddab-a97a-6a3b59150000[/caption] little more than a comely diseuse, well connected because of Maeterlinck who bullied her way into a few performances of Carmen and Melisande with only a bit of a voice. Not so. Leblanc was accomplished singer who to the end of her days embraced new music, not only of Debussy but by Auric, Honegger, Ravel and Poulenc. She was a published author with books for children and two memoirs to her credit. She was in demand as a recitalist for years and she too had a knack for publicity-remember, her Carmen disgusted the secretaires of the Opera-comique and caused her to be fired from the company--a dismissal that made the front pages. Like Mary Garden, Georgette tried her hand in film later in life, and like Mary Garden the results are best forgotten. But Georgette was no dilettante. She ended her life in poverty, abandoned by Maeterlinck after twenty years, the Maeterlinck who professed to be indifferent toward music and seemed long to be indifferent to Georgette! But Georgette went on with her concerts and finally sang Debussy's opera herself, after appearing in several of Maeterlinck's plays. She appeared in two other operas based on Maeterlinck's work, Paul Dukas's Ariane et Barbe-bleu and Fevrier's Monna Vanna. Georgette Leblanc made a few recordings and I'm sorry not to have access to them. Mary Garden recorded a little, not as much as her great fame leads you to expect. Its interesting to compare the first two Melisandes, Mary Garden and Maggie Teyte in the same melodie by Claude Debussy, Beau soir. The setting sun turns the rivers rose..".elle a la mer, nous au tombeau" (she to the sea, we to the tomb) Here's Mary Garden in 1929, with Jean Dansereau at the piano: [audio:garen-beau-soir.mp3] Now, Maggie Teyte, accompanied by Gerald Moore, recorded in 1944 [audio:teyte-beau-soir.mp3] Maargaret Tate was born in 1888. She changed the spelling of her last name [caption id="attachment_11853" align="alignright" width="92" caption="Maggie Teyte in the 1940s"]00000178-6a23-ddab-a97a-6a3b59160000[/caption] to 'Teyte' to make it easier for the French to pronounce. Teyte was an exquisite artist whose career was interrupted by marriage and changing tastes. But she persevered, often with help. Her career was revived splendidly in the 1930s when a fan in New York financed a series of recordings of Debussy melodies with Teyte and Alfred Cortot. She had learned her craft from the great tenor Jean de Reszke-and when presented to Debussy in 1908 the composer sighed "Mon dieu, une autre ecossaise"-another Scottish girl (Mary Garden was born in Aberdeen-Maggie was pure working class English). Teyte claimed that Debussy had very little to say to her-but he must have approved of the young woman's talent and musicianship. Maggie Teyte gave 19 performances of Melisande in Paris. The opera haunted her the rest o her long life though she seldom had the opportunity to sing it. There were a few performances in London. Then, at sixty (!) Maggie Teyte sang Melisande with the New York City Opera. By this time she was singing "bleeding chunks" of the opera in recital...taking all the roles: Melisande, Pelleas, Golaud, the elderly Arklel, the child Yniold and the mother, Genevieve. Here's Maggie at the Town Hall in New York on January 15, 1948, singing Act III sc. 1 of the opera . Golaud has sent Pelleas and Melisande into a forbidding cave to search for Melisande's lost wedding ring. The cave is terrifying, and at the sight of three beggars, the couple runs away [audio:teyte-pelleas-sc.mp3] Gillian Opstad follows each of the three Melisandes through marriages, scandal, same sex relationships, triumph, poverty and music. They have in common this ethereal creature of Maeterlinck's. Some maintain that Melisande is a child, a victim. Virgil Thomson has an interesting take: " The tension of animal magnetism is the basic drama of this opera. For Melsiande, beneath her reticence, is a flame that consumes...the play of her unrivaled libido against the fixitries of a well-bred French family reveals character in each instance. It turns Golaud, her husband, repeatedly to violence. It lights the fires of passion in his half-brother Pelleas, a young man easily enough inflamed. " Passion each of these ladies had. Mary Garden, for all her press worthy [caption id="attachment_11849" align="alignright" width="91" caption="Mary Garden"]00000178-6a23-ddab-a97a-6a3b59180000[/caption] deceits, love with a Turkish pasha, diamonds from the Shah of Persia, never married and traveled with her mother or one of of her sisters. Maggie, after two disastrous marriages, turned to women in her old age, as did Georgette. Both were rumored to have had "illegitimate" children and both were assumed to have bedded Debussy. Mary may have. Maggie said only, "I was not his type." All loved Melisande and none ever recovered from her. Debussy's Melisande knits together three extraordinary lives and careers with the creation of one ethereal character who passeth understanding. Because I suspect she would insist upon it, we give the last word to Mary Garden. Included in this clip is a 1961 interview for the BBC. Mary is 87 years old. She talks of Debussy and of Melisande-who she had created sixty years earlier: [youtube n98CxH4V94Y 490 344] Debussy's Melisande by Gillian Opstad is published by the Boydell Press. It's a great read if you love music and opera, and even if you don't. --Christopher Purdy
