Music: Anti-Wagner Opera

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To France's Claude Debussy, Germany's Richard Wagner was "that old poisoner" of the pure wells of music. In the 1890's, fuming at the "grandiloquent hysteria" of the Wagnerian heroes—and calling his predecessor "a beautiful sunset that was mistaken for a dawn"—Debussy, singlehanded, set about creating a new anti-Wagnerian style. The result was the only opera he ever finished, Pelléas et Mélisande. Based on the play by Maurice Maeterlinck, it had a shadowy, once-upon-a-time plot that actually bore a genteel resemblance to Wagner's Tristan und Isolde.

In a sunless castle by a timeless sea, the story went, lived a young prince named Pelléas. He was as innocent and guileless as Mélisande, the bride of his half brother. In a helpless, fateful series of encounters, their destinies became tangled until, on a moonlit night, he became literally entangled in her long hair as she combed it down from her tower window. And just when they fully realized their love, her husband came upon them and ran his sword through Pelléas.

It took Debussy ten years to finish his score. Then, in 1902, it had its first performance, and it made Debussy's reputation. Too delicate to qualify as operatic roast beef, Pelléas easily won a place in the repertory as a savory for connoisseurs. As such, last week, it was served up at Manhattan's Met after an absence of four seasons. It was the Met's best performance of the season so far.

Debussy's singers have no arias—they sing as naturally as if speaking—while the orchestra sweeps along in the major role. Unlike Wagner's characters, Debussy's do not bemoan their fates; they simply submit to them. Nor is there any Wagnerian bellowing. Where Tristan shouts "Isolde! Geliebte!" at the top of his lungs, with the orchestra going full out, Pelléas whispers "Je t'aime."

Peerless French Conductor Pierre Monteux, 78, made the Metropolitan orchestra sound like the first-rate instrument it can be, blending Debussy's music in a luxurious veil of sound, building subtly from the elusive sighings of the first scenes to the full-blooded climax near the end. Onstage, Baritone Theodor Uppman sang and acted Pelléas asif he believed him. Baritone Martial Singher (as the half brother), Basso Jerome Hines (as the half-blind grandfather) and Martha Lipton (as Pelléas' mother) all sang like fine anti-Wagnerians. And though the delicate voice of Soprano Nadine Conner (Mélisande) sometimes seemed half lost in the glimmering sound from the orchestra pit, her performance came even closer than the others' to the opera's fairy-tale intention.

Though the Met has no illusions that Debussy will pull the crowds that Verdi, Puccini—and Wagner—do. it is proudly scheduling five more performances this season. It will also broadcast Pelleas nationally on Jan. 2.