Search - Virgil Hartinger, William Dazeley, Lin Lin Fan :: Debussy: The Edgar Allen Poe Operas

Claude Debussy is admired as a colour artist and alchemist of sound. Debussys opera Pelléas et Mélisande premièred in 1902 and is regarded as a very special masterpiece, albeit a solitary one. The composers relationship with opera however was not as distanced as one could suppose from focusing on this single work which is in fact not an isolated component within the artists oeuvre. Plans existed for further operatic projects and Debussy devoted himself intensely to two operas based on texts by Edgar Allen Poe during the last few years of his life which were dominated by ill health. He continued working on La Chute de la Maison Usher (The Fall of the House of Usher) until shortly before his death and was distraught at not being able to complete this composition. Le Diable dans le Beffroi (The Devil in the Belfry) has only survived in sketch form. The English musicologist Robert Orledge (*1948), a renowned expert within the field of French music at the beginning of the twentieth century, reconstructed both operas with great sensitivity to Debussys compositional style, augmenting missing passages. Debussy had promised the New York Metropolitan Opera the premiere of the Poe operas, apparently still believing that he would still complete them both. The composer received contractual confirmation that both works would only be performed consecutively on the same evening, meaning that the gloomy melancholy of one work would serve as a counterweight to the mocking humour of the other. The operas in their complete form as reconstructed by Robert Orledge have never been heard within the context intended by the composer. The production featuring the Göttinger Symphonie Orchester is therefore a world première: according to Debussys wishes, the two operas would have been performed at the New York Metropolitan Opera in this exact juxtaposition.