page_title: Pelléas et Mélisande (Herbert von Karajan recording)
section_title: Critical reception
hierarchical_section_title: Pelléas et Mélisande (Herbert von Karajan recording) / Critical reception
caption_attribution_description: English: 1]Mary Garden as Méĺisande in Debussy's "Pelléas et Méĺisande" Русский: Мэри Гарден в роли Мелизанды в опере «Пеллеас и Мелизанда»
context_page_description: Pelléas et Mélisande is a 162-minute studio album of Claude Debussy's opera, performed by Christine Barbaux, José van Dam, Nadine Denize, Ruggero Raimondi, Frederica von Stade, Richard Stilwell and Pascal Thomas with the Chorus of the German Opera Berlin and the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Herbert von Karajan. It was released in 1979.
context_section_description: Lionel Salter reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in December 1979, comparing it with an earlier recording of the opera conducted by Pierre Boulez. Frederica von Stade, he wrote, "well conveys Mélisande's wide-eyed innocence and simplicity by her purity of voice and lightness of tone, and makes credible the transition from the startled gazelle of the opening to the awakening woman of Act 4". Richard Stilwell was equally well cast as a keen, lively, likeable Pelléas, rhapsodic in his two brief erotic climaxes. His bariton-martin negotiated Pelléas's tricky tessitura without any signs of strain. As Golaud, José van Dam gave a "distinguished" performance, equally convincing in the Prince's inability to understand Mélisande, his chilling passive aggression and his paroxysms of murderous fury. Christine Barbaux was an "effective and unaffectedly childlike" en travesti Yniold, and there was no cause for complaint either about Nadine Denize's Geneviève. The only soloist who was significantly disappointing was Ruggero Raimondi. It was not his fault that his Arkel sounded too much like Pascal Thomas's physician in their scene at Mélisande's death bed, but he should have defined the King's character more clearly, and he should have been more conscientious in observing Debussy's meticulously crafted speech rhythms (a sin of which some of his colleagues were guilty too, although not to the same extent). Conducting a "uniquely subtle score" in which "understatement [was] customary", Herbert von Karajan presented an interpretation that was "decidedly unorthodox" to the point of blatantly defying some of the dynamics that Debussy had stipulated. His Pelléas "seethes with barely-suppressed tensions which constantly erupt in passionate outbursts: again and again the orchestra boils over in an ecstasy which can scarcely be contained by the sound engineers". Karajan's reading was powerfully atmospheric and "often ravishing, with a rich, glowing warmth", but his handling of his orchestra threw a veil over some of the score's finer details. The album's audio quality too had both strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, the changes of acoustic in the scenes set in a grotto and in the castle's vaults were managed adroitly. On the other, Pelléas was sometimes too loud, Geneviève's letter reading was too quiet and a few of Mélisande's words and the cries of the off-stage sailors were barely audible at all. In sum, the album provided "a very characteristic Karajan performance, deeply committed and full of beautiful if contentious things". Whether it was better or worse than Boulez's cooler, clearer version depended upon where one believed the truth of Debussy's opera to lie.
   
  James Goodfriend reviewed the album on LP in Stereo Review in March 1980. Frederica von Stade, he wrote, as the "mystery-surrounded Mélisande, is not only innocent and evasive, but, when the time comes, passionate, despondent, welcoming of death, ... tragic rather than pathetic". Richard Stilwell's Pelléas was eager despite his fear, José van Dam's Golaud genuine and traumatized, Ruggero Raimondi's Arkel embracing and aptly Debussyan, Christine Barbaux's Yniold excellent, Nadine Denize's Geneviève euphonious and Pascal Thomas's shepherd and physician entirely satisfactory. The Berlin Philharmonic supplied a "voluptuous sonic cushion" with none of the nasal string sound that a French orchestra would have produced. The salient features of Herbert von Karajan's interpretation were its "meticulous attention to changing sonorities" and its muscularity as a piece of music drama. An opera usually represented almost as though it were a dream was instead made into a story of "real characters with real emotions", "a bigger, stronger, more varied music" than anyone had discovered in the score before. EMI's production team had favoured strings over woodwinds and voices but not culpably so, and had achieved an audio quality commendable for "its clarity, its warmth and beauty of sound and its exceedingly wide dynamic range". The album, in short, was "splendid". 
   
  J. B. Steane revie
caption: The Scottish soprano Mary Garden as Mélisande in the opera's 1908 American première