Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande, premiered in 1902, may be the first great opera of the 20th century yet it remains marginal repertoire. Its power is understated, elusive, even unoperatic: before the premiere, Debussy instructed his cast: “Please forget that you are singers.”

Much of the appeal lies in the orchestration but for this Independent Opera production, composer Stephen McNeff has rescored the piece for chamber orchestra. If you cut the orchestra in half, of course some of the mystery goes missing but here, with conductor Dominic Wheeler achieving a fine balance between tension and restraint, surprisingly little.

The Baylis Studio is not the most malleable theatre but Madeleine Boyd’s multi-level set transforms it into a claustrophobic space that brings you face to face with Debussy’s hapless characters. Boyd and director Alessandro Talevi have removed the cod-medievalism, relocating the action to the time of its composition. Some interpretative details might be controversial, notably the homoerotic charge that courses from Golaud to Pelléas, but none gets in the way.

Instead the repressed hysteria that Freud located in the bourgeois family rips right through the tightly knit fabric of respectability. Each of the young singers is wholly inside their role and while the opera might hit even harder if it was sung in English, everyone handles the text’s very particular prosody with skill, although only two of the cast are French.

Thanks to the sheer force of their performances, Thorbjørn Gulbrandsøy’s Pelléas and Andrew Foster-Williams’s Golaud seem the focal points but Ingrid Perruche makes Mélisande a convincing silent movie vamp. There are no weak links. Many more glamorous productions achieve half as much with twice the resources.
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