TRANSPARENCY, TRADITION, AND THE PRIMACY OF TEXT

A Note on Opera Atelier’s New Arrangement of Pelléas et Mélisande by Dr. Christopher Bagan

The Grand Ravalement: Modernizing a Masterpiece

The prospect of realizing Claude Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande—a massive score comprising over 3,000 measures and over 500 pages of music—presents a singular artistic challenge. While the original work demands an orchestra of around 80 players, this new arrangement for Opera Atelier seeks to reveal the “wood underneath” the symphonic weight.

The philosophy behind this reduction is rooted in the French harpsichord tradition of the grand ravalement. In the 18th century, Parisian builders would take cherished Flemish instruments and radically modify them—widening cases and updating actions—to suit the music of a new era. They preserved the soul of the original masterpiece while adapting its mechanics for a new context. In this same spirit, this arrangement strips away layers of orchestral mass to achieve a gain in resolution, ensuring the work speaks clearly within our specific acoustic and aesthetic space.

The French Continuum: From Monteverdi to Debussy

Usually, we view Debussy through a modern lens, looking backward. This project attempts the reverse: viewing Pelléas through the eyes of Couperin, Charpentier, and Rameau.

At its core, Debussy’s score is three hours of heightened dialogue. His treatment of text is strikingly similar to the basso continuo style of Monteverdi; both composers sought to distill narrative into rhythms that enhance the natural inflection of speech. By paring down the orchestration, the ensemble becomes a “modernized continuo,” capable of responding immediately to the subtle mood shifts of the characters.

To bridge this historical divide, this production interweaves instrumental works by Charpentier and Rameau directly into the Debussy score. These transitions feel seamless because Debussy himself was part of a lineage—including Ravel and Poulenc—that constantly looked back to the Grand Siècle to define French musical identity.

The 14-Piece Ensemble: Detail over Volume

The shift to a nimble 14-piece ensemble (string quintet, wind quintet, trumpet, harp, piano, and percussion) is the ideal vehicle to ensure Maurice Maeterlinck’s Symbolist text is given total primacy. The challenge was to ensure the reduction did not become a “monochrome sketch of a full-color painting.”

To restore the transparency familiar to Debussy, this production utilizes gut strings. While often associated strictly with the Baroque, gut strings remained the standard well into the 20th century. Their vocal quality and transparent timbre support the singers with ease, allowing every “jot and tittle” of the score to be heard within the splendor of Koerner Hall.

Individualism and Interpretation

Debussy’s original score is teeming with “clarifying markings”—instructions intended to help a massive string section play with a unified pulse. In a chamber setting, these markings can be distilled. By moving away from the “mass” of the orchestra, we allow the individualistic imagination of soloist-level players to come to the fore.

Ultimately, this arrangement serves a vital practical purpose: it opens the work to more intimate venues and “smaller” voices whose unique expressive qualities are often lost in large halls. By weaving together the revolutionary spirit of Debussy with the délicatesse of the French Baroque, we offer something that is at once old, new, borrowed, and—in the best tradition of Debussy—perhaps a little taboo.

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by Mark Kikot

Of all the changing forms that love can take,

I thought by now I would have chosen one

To hang my heart upon. But there are none

Which so completely charm the mind, or break

The will, that I could live without the ache

Of longing for the formless passion spun

Into a chrysalis of wonder, while the sun

Invites the dreaming spirit to partake.

Between the rose’s tear and tear of thorn,

I’ve wandered like a ghost in drifting mist

And fading memory of flesh now shed,

Still looking for the perfect way to mourn

The passing of a breath from lips once kissed,

With love composed, before the image fled.

May 21, 2021

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by Mark Kikot

What sings in us without its singing heard

Is not delusion or mere fantasy;

And yet, we must imagine every word

That rises from our lips in ecstasy.

The name we give the voice that shapes the sound

Cannot be mouthed or tongued until we wake

The sleeper, whose pure breath stills warms the ground

Grown cold and hard, by dreaming Him awake.

For life’s recall we find ourselves in need

Of beings who no longer touch and bless

So openly our eyes, or wounds which bleed

With perfect love and flaming heart’s caress.

In His embrace the human form, aglow,

Makes angels move through oratorio.

April 15, 2021

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by Mark Kikot

In sleep’s collage of dreams diaphanous

We stir like poppies in a summer’s breeze. 

We stretch and rise, but do not wake. At ease,

We hear ourselves, our voices amourous,

Exchange a whispered need, made tremulous

By touch and tenderness; the purring tease

Of eyes and lips and fingertips that frees

The flesh to grasp, embrace the rapturous.

The form it takes is often ‘rich and strange’,

And celebrates a beauty bound by love

Emerging from a heart so dark and deep

The light it sheds, beyond the human range,

Appears angelic with the promise of

A blissful singing while the dreamers sleep.

December 15, 2020

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by Mark Kikot

As the stillness 

of his will’s creative focus

gathers strength,

a shamanistic magic quivers 

through his limbs.

With buoyant silken breath,

they stir

and stretch out time,

then stepping

glide into the grace of formlessness.

The presence he is seeking

moves towards the water’s edge

and casts a double image:

man becoming bird.

As he draws in the spirit

of another pulse,

his feathered flesh unfolds

a white and gray

and black-tipped wing.

And now the crane

begins to mime the man,

the motions

which the human body makes

to charge the world

with life.

A living tapestry,

the ritual goes round and round

until the dancer pauses 

in one final brushstroke lifts an arm like neck 

and tilts a hand-poised head.

A preening beauty

conscious only of itself,

its breathless rhythmic heart.

June 6, 2020

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by Mark Kikot

Why can’t I shake the thought of angels loose

From where they lodge at night inside my head?

To drop on wings of snow, like down of goose

That God is plucking for his featherbed,

As great grandmother would, while stitching, say,

Bewitching me with bright and knowing eyes,

As I stared out into the light of day

Upon a world pristine, profound, and wise.

We don’t believe in angels anymore,

Unless they visit us through mediums

Of music, paint, or poem’s metaphor,

To soothe the stress of life’s deliriums.

Where is the man to wrestle them to earth

Like some clear dream he dreamt before his birth?

March 11, 2020

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by Mark Kikot

The masks I’ve worn while looking for my face

Now hang like pictures time has veiled with dust;

Yet still they search my eyes and try to place

The roles they had in dreams I learned to trust.

Their features find in me a mixed review

Like gaudy joy cast in Venetian light,

That darkens quickly to the sombre hue

Of Florentine submission to the night.

Confronted by this hot and crowded room,

I do my best to make a breathing space

And speak a line or two to those for whom

A life is something death cannot erase:

“We rise above an antiquated yoke

With face beatified…and grace Baroque.”

January 29, 2020

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Costume Designer for Opera Atelier

(July 4, 1938 – May 27, 2019)

by Mark Kikot

There is the adage, “Clothes don’t make the man”;

But when the style becomes a woman, born

With eyes that opened like a peacock’s fan,

We gaze on love unclothed by what is worn.

And so, the stage is set, and ‘dress’ rehearsed;

Adjustments made to match the human form

On which the finery enflames the versed,

Enfolds the voice it uses to perform.

The dancers trace the pace of her attire;

In fabrics muscle-taut and bloused for flight,

They whirl, while swirling colours blend, inspire

Like patterns cut from dervish’s delight.

Behind each scene she played a craftsman’s part,

Designing wardrobes rich with works of art.

June 20, 2019

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by Mark Kikot

Marshalling the unities

of space 

and time 

and form,

the dancers 

find their footing,

flow 

like water

fleshed

around the roots 

they nourish,

patterns of refinement

woven through the orchestrated will

and range of operatic voices.

But the frangible

is never far removed,

and even virtuosity

can lose

its place

and slip 

beneath the surface,

grasping

momentarily

at language

out of keeping

with the tone and sentiment, 

decorum and precision,

of Baroque expressiveness.

So when the singer/heroine’s 

recall and fervent love

of healing notes

and broken words

betray her

for an instant,

lapse’s understudy, “Shit!”, 

escapes her lips; 

except that for the sake 

of authenticity

it should be “Merde!”,

because the tragedy’s Médée,

transfigured by Charpentier,

infused libretto of Corneille.

Once we’ve shrugged off 

our priggishness,

suppressed our chuckles,

I remain perversely channeled

in my sense 

of how appropriate it seems;

a faux pas, yes,

and yet, in it I hear a faintest echo 

of Medea’s rage 

and treacherous revenge

that reaches us across millennia,

on wavelengths amplified by pain,

to pass a monstrous judgment

on a brutal unjust world of love.

April 9, 2017

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Marshall writes: “On September 23, 2014, we received an email from Opera Atelier patron Mark Kikot, which contained the first of many beautiful poems he has written for us over the years, all inspired by Opera Atelier productions that he has attended.

The collection is impressive, and we thought that as part of Opera Atelier’s 40th anniversary celebration, it would be interesting to share these poems with our friends and supporters. Mr. Kikot has generously agreed to allow us to do so.

We will share the poems with you in chronological order.”

Seduction Unexpected

Opera Atelier’s Pre-Season Gathering

How I arrived
is easier explained
than what
I’m doing here.
I’m just a hanger-on
who knows
someone
who knows.
I do not have the money
or the musical cachet
to bring this art to life.
And so I slip past faces
flush with means
that chat and sip and munch
while waiting
for an aria, or two,
a sampling from Alcina.
As the flute-glass thin soprano
sets the stage
for love betrayed,
the room
begins to quiet
till our tongues are hushed.
Her voice then lifts
in veils of rent despair
and rises
into anguish,
searing, cutting,
self-inflicted wounds
which twist to sudden rage
and hunger for revenge,
yet cannot be sustained,
but fall at last
through grief of loss
and lost identity.
Though I had come
expecting nothing more
than lecture notes
on period and set design,
or notes rehearsed to catch
like scales of butterflies
the nuances of human sound,

I sit here moved
almost to tears
by heart’s lament,
as if her sorrow
was the thing I sought,
a secret buried deep as death
in each of us,
as if I were the cause
and the effect.
But now her suffering
takes on another form,
becomes a kind of parody
because her voice is forced,
contrived and desperate.
It strains
in search of incantations
that she needs
to conjure up the energy
and do
what she must do,
create
what she imagines,
wills, desires;
it leaves her standing back
amazed
by her achievement,
while I feel myself contorted into rock.

September 23, 2014

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