For listeners who love
Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, virtually any recording of the work is worth hearing. The work's glorious melodies, voluptuous harmonies, diaphanous textures, sensuous colors, ambiguous but glamorous characters, and incomprehensible but compelling story are so completely enchanting and enthralling that only a truly terrible performance is unendurable. While this performance, led by conductor
Ernest Ansermet, is far from truly terrible, it is almost as far from being truly good. To start with,
Ansermet is a wholly competent but undramatic and unexciting conductor who holds
Debussy's opera together without moving it forward. But then
L'Orchestre de la Suisse Romande is a less-than-wholly competent orchestra that can only approximate the exquisite beauty of
Debussy's score.
Camille Maurane is a reasonably competent but not especially interesting Pelléas; his sweet-toned but technically limited voice gives no clue as to why he does the strange things he does.
Erna Spoorenberg is a less than competent and much less than compelling Mélisande; her small voice is less an incarnation of the eternal feminine than a little girl lost.
George London is a far-more-than competent Golaud; his magisterial voice is so strong and so compelling that one winds up rooting for the bad guy just because he's the only convincing character on-stage. Decca's mid-'60s sound is warm, lush, and reverberant, but it captures a performance that is wan, lean, and uninvolving.