Opera

Pelleas et Melisande

Theatre Royal, Glasgow

four stars

Keith Bruce

IT is, of course, Claude Debussy's glorious music that draws people back to Pelleas and Melisande, but the composer was one of many drawn to set Maeterlinck's drama after its Paris premiere in the last decade of the 19th century. The achievement of Sir David McVicar's new production for Scottish Opera is to draw a 21st century audience compellingly into his own version of the mindset of that time. Nascent modernism here, symbolised perhaps in the birth of the child that Melisande does not live to see, is a mix of Ibsen-esque symbol-laced "realism" and fairytale fantasy, a search for universal truths in the domestic that can be traced through much of the literature of the time.

Like Opera North's recent acclaimed Ring cycle, the period of the piece is indicated chiefly in the costuming. Rae Smith's stage design is more impressionist, an indoor/outdoor world of fluctuating depth that is at its most attractive when Paule Constable's lighting has the largest canvas to work on, as in the cave scene that closes Act Two. Framing tabs of curtain precisely delineate each scene – a technique that now looks a little dated, but undoubtedly suits the story-book approach of the score and the unhurried way of McVicar and conductor Stuart Stratford through it.

Carolyn Sampson's brittle crown- and ring-losing Melisande is a woman who refuses to be tied down, but seems doomed from the start, and Andrei Bondarenko's Pelleas a soul who barely recognises, far less understands, his own torment. The performances of all the vocal principals are first rate, but the honours have to go to Roland Wood, for a singing and acting tour de force as her husband Golaud. The company favourite may well have added a career-defining role to his CV in this production. In that he is very ably supported by Alastair Miles as his grandfather Arkel, and – on opening night – by Cedric Amamoo as his son Yniold, their interaction at the end of Act IV among the opera's most memorable scenes.

With the Orchestra of Scottish Opera's growing relationship with Stratford producing beautifully measured playing from the pit – winds on particularly fine form – this is a Pelleas that can surely stand happily alongside the 20th century production that served the company for many years.