Santa Fe Opera 1: In Darker Light

Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande is a work in which brief flickers of light are forever trying to emerge from the surrounding gloom: for every glint from a golden ring there is a bottomless pool waiting to swallow it whole; beacons from distant ships are engulfed by impenetrable fog; and there are places surrounding the castle where the midday sun never reaches the forest floor. The notion of darkness as an inevitable default state was central to the new production that appeared as part of this summer’s Santa Fe Opera season – the work’s first appearance on the Santa Fe stage in over forty-five years – for which director Netia Jones created a patient, contemplative world that remained attuned to both the elemental symbolism of Maeterlinck’s text and the pervasive unease in Debussy’s score.

Although there was often a lot going on –…