GREAT RECORDINGS phase 15

DEBUSSY: PELLÉAS ET MÉLISANDE
Jacques Jansen, Irène Joachim, Henri-Bertrand Etcheverry
Germaine Cernay, Paul Cabanel & Leila ben Sedira
Chœurs Yvonne Gouverné & Orchestre Symphonique
Roger Désormière
DEBUSSY: MÉLODIES
Maggie Teyte & Alfred Cortot · Mary Garden & Claude Debussy

3 45770 2
(Angel: 3 45782 2) (3CDs)
Recorded 1941, 1936 & 1904
Mono/ADD
196 minutes

Back >>

‘A truly historic recording with superbly idiomatic performances from native French singers, a great advantage in this opera. With a well-nigh perfect cast, committed orchestral playing and Désormière’s inspired pacing and moulding of the score, this recording remains a classic of the gramophone.’
(The Gramophone)
Awards: Diapason d’Or & Timbre de Platine d’Opéra International, France

When Debussy saw Maurice Maeterlinck’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 1893 he knew at once that he had found the perfect subject and text for the opera of his dreams: a drama in which the characters, fixed in no particular time or place, submit to their destiny. The operatic masterpiece he created from Maeterlinck’s Symbolist play was first performed at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in April 1902.

Debussy’s own choice for Mélisande was the Scottish lyric soprano Mary Garden, who through the miracle of early gramophone recording is heard on these CDs in a brief extract from the opera and in three Ariettes oubliées with the composer himself at the piano. Garden’s successor in the role, and apparently Debussy’s favourite Mélisande, was another British singer, Maggie Teyte, and she too is represented here in famous recordings of Debussy songs, made in 1936 with the distinguished Swiss-born French pianist Alfred Cortot.

The recording of the opera is a celebrated one, made in Paris in 1941 with a fine cast of French singers, who had inherited the art and craft of performing the work from those who had created it. Irène Joachim (granddaughter of the great violinist) had worked on the role of Mélisande with Mary Garden, and Jacques Jansen had studied with Claire Croiza, the first Geneviève, and with Georges Viseur, the coach and chorus master for the work’s premiere in 1902.

The orchestra is of the period, distinctively French in its wind and string sound, and the ‘shrewd and sensitive’ conductor is Roger Désormière, who had already established his reputation at the Opéra-Comique, where he became music director in 1944.