Irresistibly Haunting Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande - reviewed by ROBERT ANDERSON 'Franz Welser-Möst conducts admirably ...'

I am eternally grateful to the set designer Rolf Glittenberg and Sven-Eric Bechtof as stage director for the more than two hours they let me spend in the Arctic Circle while watching this opera. It is glorious to see snow everywhere, so long as it avoids one's own front steps. It was more than delightful to watch Mélisande arriving at her destination in a cockleshell of a skiff and playfully covering the odd prostrate character with a counterpane of snow. That she let her hair down, not from the casement of some hoary old mediaeval castle, but while lying on the roof of an old Citroen car apparently trapped in a drift with both Pelléas and Golaud inside, was final preparation for her final exit far from dead, tossing a golden ball nonchalantly into the air and doubtless ready for many a snowball fight with little Yniold.

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