ETO’s PELLEAS ET MELISANDE at Bath Theatre Royal.
I would argue that Claude Debussy’s dark meandering score for Maeterlinck’s original play, part fairy story, part symbolist essay, is one for the more academic, purist of opera-goers. A gloomy tale in a shady place, this is not so much an entertainment as a show of technical prowess for digestion. All credit must go to the impeccable skills of the English Touring Opera’s singers and orchestra who followed the composer’s complex pathways of discordant harmony with utter conviction, in sequences of self-possessed musical exploration.
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