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  • Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
    Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
  • Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
    Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
  • Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
    Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
  • Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
    Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
  • Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
    Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
  • Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig
    Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin, © Photo: Bernd Uhlig

Pelleas and Melisande: Deutsche Oper Berlin

About the Event

The Deutsche Oper Berlin opens the season with Debussy's most famous opera, a work about family structures and the self‐destructive element within our souls.

"Pelleas and Melisande" is a multi‐faceted work revolving around the House of Allemonde [literally: everywhere] as its downfall approaches. Four generations of the family are stricken with illness, death and stagnation. All hopes are pinned on the outsider, Mélisande, who has married into the family. The brothers Golaud and Pelléas end up clashing over their love for the woman. Old King Arkel is unable to solve this triangular conflict, which leads to fratricide, a brutal end for the pregnant Mélisande and the fall of the House of Allemonde.

Debussy uses the central metaphor of the sea and its elemental movements and shiftings to express through music the moral condition and conflicts of his protagonists, inventing the suppression of light and darkness as a dramatic device.

Allemonde is a place of our times, a place within our very selves, anchored in reality. At the same time Debussy has given us an opera in which Allemonde functions as a mirror of our soul and our soul reflects a cosmic reality — shot through with mighty, elemental forces and holding out the chance of a happy outcome.

Sung in French, with English and German surtitles.

Cast / Production

Conductor: Donald Runnicles
Director, Set design, Light design: Marco Arturo Marelli
Costume design: Dagmar Niefind
Chorus‐Conductor: Thomas Richter

Arkel: Stephen Bronk
Geneviève: Ronnita Miller
Pelléas: Thomas Blondelle
Golaud: Josef Wagner
Mélisande: Jana Kurucová
Yniold: Alexandra Hutton
A Doctor: Thomas Lehman

Chorus: Chor der Deutschen Oper Berlin
Orchesta: Orchester der Deutschen Oper Berlin

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