Word: pelle
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...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...
...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 Pell...
...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...
...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...
...Educate the New Yorkers." Francis M. V. Cahouet '54, CRIMSON Business Manager, is handling the problem of distribution. "We couldn't decide on a place for the hand out." Cahouet said, "but we finally picked Tammany Hall." Other copies will be sold in only the finer hotels around Pell and Mott streets...