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by Claude Debussy, directed by Marshall Pynkoski

Opera Atelier, Koerner Hall, TELUS Centre for Performance, 273 Bloor Street West, Toronto

April 15, 16, 18 & 19, 2026

Arkel: “On a tant besoin de beauté aux côtés de la mort”

Eyebrows must have been raised when Opera Atelier, the Toronto opera company renowned for its productions of 17th- and 18th-century opera, announced that it would stage Debussy’s 1902 opera Pelléas et Mélisande. By the end of the 19th century modern instruments has replaced period instruments, and in ballet pointe work has already begun in the 1820s. OA is famed for its “historically informed” productions, but how can OA stage a work created when music and dance had already changed so fundamentally? What OA actually gives us with their Pelléas is an early 20th-century opera as performed by a baroque opera company. The music-making is still gorgeous and the stage direction is still as meticulous has we have come to expect from this company. Yet, the clash of 18th- and 20th-century modes of expression is obvious and director Marshall Pynkoski has an interpretation of the opera that, quite unlike him, neglects key portions of the libretto.

The libretto for the opera is essentially the text of the 1893 play of the same name by Belgian playwright Maurice Maeterlinck. Maeterlinck belong to the Symbolist movement in literature that sought to turn away from crass realism to explore the world of dreams and the imagination. Maeterlinck’s Pelléas is set in some pseudo-medieval period in the country of Allemonde (or “Everywhere”).

The majority of speeches in the play end in ellipses as if none of the characters can complete their thoughts, as if there is something too immense or too mysterious in the world for them to express it fully. Yet, despite the fragmentary nature of the speeches, the imagery — water, trees, light, dark –in the play links up in a cumulative fashion to create the sense that the characters are caught in a web of influences that they feel but cannot comprehend.

The idea of Pynkoski and choreographer Jeannette Lajeunnesse-Zingg is to embody these forces in the form of dancers who wear the same sort of 18th-century garb we have seen in numerous OA productions. In 18th-century French opera dance was fully incorporated into opera. By the late 19th-century the ballet had separated from opera to have its own life and operas, like Debussy’s, no longer included ballet. Thus, to put dance into Pelléas, the director and choreographer have had to add dance music to Debussy’s score.

While any change to the score will rile purists, what some will especially wonder at is that these musical additions are from the 18th century (specifically, from Charpentier and Rameau). Both Act 1 and Act 2 begin with extended dance sections choreographed in the 18th-century style we are familiar from Lajeunnesse-Zingg, not in any style related to the early 20th century. I don’t enjoy interpolations in a score of any sort, but these, though they allow the corps de ballet to demonstrate its skill, do not move the action forward or help explain the strange world of the opera. In his Director’s Notes, Pynkoski says, “In this production, the overarching forest acts as a Freudian metaphor for the unconscious, and the Artists of the Atelier Ballet become an invisible force of fate, propelling the protagonists towards their inescapable conclusion”. This would be marvellous except that the dancers, though they do at first imitate the forest, most seem to be onlookers, not instigators, of the action.

The one key figure who does emerge in these interludes is Eros, costumed exactly as he was in OA’s anthology piece All Is Love (2022). In his opening remarks, Pynkoski stated that we do not know who Mélisande is. Even she doesn’t know who she is or where she came from. Pynkoski speculated that she may even be a supernatural being like a sylph. It appears that Pynkoski has adopted this last idea, with Eros infusing Mélisande with a love that men find irresistible.

Frank Wedekind titles the first play of his duology about the ultimate femme fatale Lulu Erdgeist (1895) or “Earth Spirit”. The main difference between Wedekind and Maeterlinck, close in time as their plays are, is that Wedekind’s Lulu is imbued with a sex appeal that drives men to their doom, whereas Maeterlinck’s Mélisande only inspires overwhelming love. Both Golaud and his half-brother Pelléas fall in love with Mélisande at first sight. Pynkoski even shows the aged, once-blind Arkel attracted to her once he can see. While Mélisande prefers the company of the gentle Pelléas versus the roughness of Golaud, she and Pelléas never commit adultery, but rather sit and weep together. The vulgarity of sex never enters Maeterlinck’s play. Yet, the transference of Mélisande’s love from Golaud, who she marries, to Pelléas is enough to spark Golaud’s jealous fury.

As usual with OA, Pynkoski draws acting of a high level of detail seldom seen in most opera productions. Pynkoski’s interpretation of Mélisande as some kind of supernatural being gives Meghan Lindsay quite a difficult task. Yet, Lindsay makes the idea work beautifully. She makes Mélisande a creature who imbued with innocence and whose principal emotion is fear — fear of a strange world and of strange people she does not understand. Lindsay’s singing is consistently beautiful, her voice increasing in strength and expressivity from one performance to the next.

After a series of fine performances for OA, Douglas Ray Williams gives his best-ever performance as Golaud. Williams lends his natural intensity to the full emotional arc that Golaud traverses from immediate love for the fragile Mélisande to vivid portrayals of Golaud’s increasingly difficult attempts to keep jealousy at bay when Mélisande begins to spend so much time with Pelléas. Williams’s voice has only become more powerful and more expressive since his last appearance with OA.

As Pelléas, tenor Antonin Rondepierre has neither the power nor the ability to convey as wide a rage of emotion as do Lindsay and Williams, and therefore his Pelléas comes off as rather bland compared to the other characters of this love triangle. As Pelléas’s and Golaud’s grandfather Arkel, Philippe Sly wields his deep, velvety bass-baritone to paint the old man as frightened and confused when blind and stern but comforting when he regains his sight.

Measha Brueggergosman-Lee makes a strong impression in her brief appearance as Geneviève, the mother of Pelléas and Golaud. Cynthia Akemi Smithers is very effective as Golaud’s son Yniold. The scene when Golaud has Yniold spy on Pelléas and Mélisande is the most disturbing of the opera, as Smithers makes Yniold’s cries ever more despairing when Golaud forces him to report what he is seeing.

Gerard Gauci’s set is composed primarily of the fine double staircase he had constructed for the OA production of Handel’s The Resurrection in 2023. The only structure he has added is a shuttered room in the stage right balcony to represent Mélisande’s tower room. The back walls are covered in a repeating pattern depicting a dense forest. Placed above the double staircase is a large oval that serves as the screen both for the surtitles and for projections of paintings by Gauci related to the story, such as a broken crown in the water when Golaud first meets Mélisande.

The Tafelmusik Baroque Orchestra produces a lush sound as usual, except that this time the ensemble is playing modern, not period instruments, although the stringed instruments use gut rather than steel strings. Christopher Bagan was commissioned to reduce Debussy’s original orchestration requiring 70+ musicians to one requiring only 14. Bagan’s re-orchestration is a stunning accomplishment. As with the best score reductions we hear not only the beautiful blending of sounds but also the individual lines that intertwine, thus increasing the richness of the listening experience. David Fallis may be an expert at conducting early music, but he certainly draws an exciting performance of this 20th-century score for the ensemble. He endows the music with such sweep that it almost seems a pity to stop for an intermission.

I was quite willing to accept Pynkoski’s interpretation of Mélisande as some sort of supernatural being, but my support of this notion ended when I realized that Pynoski, who normally pays minute attention to the text, decided to veer from the libretto in the final scene. Mélisande lies apparently deathly ill on a chaise-longue. What has happened to bring about this condition? What Pynkoski deliberately ignores is that Mélisande has just given birth. Arkel asks, “Veux-tu voir ton enfant?” and says the infant is right there. But we see no infant of any kind. Arkel says right near the end, “Elle est là comme si elle était la grande sœur de son enfant...”, a line that makes no sense unless we know Mélisande has given birth.

Maeterlinck is clearly emphasizing the renewal of life in the form of the infant. Instead, Pynkoski has Mélisande arise from her deathbed to lie in the same position she had at the very beginning of the opera. Eros, danced by the graceful and athletic Eric César de Mello da Silva, bends over Mélisande and kisses her mouth, seemingly re-infusing her with fatal but irresistible love. I’m afraid this invented cycle of repetition is no match for the power of the natural cycle of life found in the libretto.

Opera Atelier is very brave to extend its mandate into the 20th century, but to force a concept onto an opera that the libretto does not support hardly constitute an “historical informed” production like those OA has become famous for. Nevertheless, I would never have wanted to miss the splendid playing of Tafelmusik nor the stunning sing of Lindsay and Williams. Williams found more in the role of Golaud than any singer I have seen before. This Pelléas et Mélisande was a noble experiment, but I am ready now for OA to return to their familiar territory where they are unmatched at bringing the past to vivid life.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Meghan Lindsay as Mélisande and Douglas Ray Williams as Golaud; Meghan Lindsay as Mélisande; Meghan Lindsay as Mélisande and Antonin Rondepierre as Pelléas; Douglas Ray Williams as Golaud, Eric César de Mello da Silva and Meghan Lindsay as Mélisande. © 2026 Bruce Zinger.

For tickets visit: www.operaatelier.com.