Niccolai's Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande: The Staging of Albert Carré is a unique addition to Pélleas et Mélisande scholarship. It provides refreshing insights into the contemporarily progressive aesthetics of the mise en scène that went into the opera's premiere. It is Niccolai's hope ‘that in years to come the sources for staging will become part of the research that concerns the creative genesis of operas, and rightly so’ (p. 28). The case made for achieving that aim is presented in her opening discussion leading into a reprint of the 1907 Durand critical edition of the staging. In that discussion she addresses facets of character acting and lighting that contribute significantly to the opera's symbolist approach to storytelling.

The book roughly divides into three sections, comprising background discussion and illustrations of the premiere's costumes and stage designs, the Durand critical edition flanked with a discussion of its preparation and informative endnotes, and finally a glossary of terms and an appendix. Its opening threefold background discussion, ‘Between Shadow and Light: Albert Carré and the Staging of Pelléas et Mélisande’, which provides the reader a context for the detailed staging manual, is the main focus of this review; other parts of the book are briefly engaged. Niccolai does not encumber the Durand reprint with any of Carré's notes from his own libretto or piano-vocal score. Rather, those insights, which provide much of the impetus for her discussion, are found in the aforementioned endnotes (‘Critical Notes’) that follow. Her discussion illustrates, through select examples, the manner in which Carré's notes add meaning to a given stage direction, thus compelling the reader to further explore those endnotes in coordination with the Durand staging manual.

Before delving into the book's opening discussion, a few broader comments are in order. Staple elements such as the hardcover binding, quality of paper, clarity of print, and choices of staging and costume illustrations are all excellent. A single mild criticism is of the inconsistent application of translation, either from French to English or the opposite. Appropriately, the engaging opening discussion is given in both languages. The neatly engraved reprint of the Durand staging manual that follows is in its original French, and Carré's brief-sentence staging indications are easily comprehended with a marginal reading knowledge of French. Any needed translations of libretto text in conjunction with those stage directions can easily be had. The discussion of the sources and issues relating to the Critical Edition is admirably comprehensive, but is in English only, while the endnotes are essentially in both languages. Its commentary is presented in English, while French citations are given in their original language with accompanying English translations. A concise, helpful glossary of staging paraphernalia and terms is provided in both languages, but the definitions of each item are given only in English. Finally, the appendix, featuring relevant excerpts in longer prose from Carré's Souvenirs de théatre, a transcript from an early 1930s radio programme given by Carré titled ‘La mise en scène’, correspondence with insights on the relationship between Debussy and Maeterlinck, and commentary from Marguerite Carré, is given entirely in French.

In her Foreword, Niccolai notes the impetus for her study stemmed from her interest in ‘the most modern aspect of Albert Carré's staging for the premiere of Pelléas et Mélisande, in other words the use of electric light (fixed and movable) with a clear psychological goal’ (p. xi). As neither correspondence between Debussy and Carré nor Carré's recorded reminiscences shed much light on stage realization, she engaged Carré's initial stage notes for the premiere within his libretto and piano-vocal score, along with the 1907 Durand manual that incorporated revisions arrived at over time.

The opening discussion introduces the staging in Pelléas et Mélisande as a ‘point of no return’, comprising a marriage of ‘musical and visual aesthetics’ (p. 1). It then divides into three sections, each with its own subheading. The first, titled ‘The “Atmosphere of a Dream”’,Footnote ¹ provides some historical context on how the opera's premiere took shape, at times drawing on music-oriented insights from established Pelléas et Mélisande scholars such as David Grayson, or critical-reception issues outlined by Jann Pasler. Some of the discussion in this section will not be novel to the Pelléas et Mélisande enthusiast, but for the less initiated, it succinctly provides points of interest on how the play was transformed into the opera, from both a musical and a stage-direction perspective, along with select trial-and-error honings that occurred leading up to the premiere. Summaries of critical reception of staging and costumes are interesting, as is the discussion on contrasts between the play's and the opera's staging, in addition to the former's influence on the latter.

The second section, ‘The Nuances and the Acting of the Characters’, delves into the uniqueness of character acting employed for the play, and how it carries into the operatic production. She notes the Durand staging manual lacks character descriptions for the very reason that the characters themselves ‘do not have a tangible existence’ (p. 13); rather, the story advances through the manner in which each character loosely embodies a passion or a feeling, resulting in Carré having ‘worked out his staging entirely in nuances, first of all engaging with the body language of the characters’.

Carry-over occurs in character traits from the production of Maeterlinck's original play into the opera's. Niccolai offers a description of the acting from co-director of l'Opéra Comique from 1925–31, George Ricou, who noted that ‘M. Albert Carré has given his characters a calmer appearance, which expresses their feelings more by nuances in attitude than by gestures, well suited for beings that move about in a created world’ (p. 14). Niccolai notes, for example, the virtual lack of movement in the blocking of characters during Act I, Scene 3, where Genevieve's simple act of taking Mélisande's hand into hers is all the more in relief to this quieted backdrop, ‘in complete opposition to the echoes of “ne me touche pas!”, creating a “feminine intimacy from which men are excluded’ (p. 14). She also provides details of nuance in Carré's notes that are lacking in the Durand manual, noting how a ‘game of glances’, delicate eye contacts and evasions during Pelléas's and Mélisande's first meeting in Act I, Scene III, are carefully laid out in the former in order to evoke a latent intimacy (p. 15).

Though music-element references themselves are rare in Niccolai's prose, she occasionally uses musical metaphors to describe Carré's staging, such as the ‘crescendo of [stage-direction] gestures that stress the words of Pelléas’ in the erotically charged moment when Mélisande's hair descends onto him (p. 16). Indeed, a literal crescendo, scored among supple yet swift changes in metre, occurs at this very moment (at Act III's R10) in the music. This ‘crescendo’ of specific stage directions features detailed, moment-to-moment gestures and bodily motions of Pelléas as he reacts to being inundated with her hair. ‘But’, she notes, ‘Mélisande's hair is also an extension of the feminine being, which, through Pelléas, reaches the great willow not far from the tower. Mélisande becomes, therefore, a sort of woman-tree that reconciles the bond between man and nature’ (p. 16).

Regarding progressive symbolist gestures in relation to the acting, she notes ‘sometimes, a recurrent gesture, rich in emotional weight, moves between various characters and reappears at certain key moments of the story’, such as the use of the blank stare, or, as she puts it, ‘the look that is frozen and lost in nothingness’ (p. 17). She notes the specificity with which this gesture is outlined by Carré each time it is employed. For example, the Durand manual indicates that Genevieve, upon reading the despairing letter from Golaud to Arkel, ‘lets her hands fall down on her knees and looks straight ahead of herself into nothingness’. This gesture, with similar descriptive detail in the staging manual, recurs in Act IV from Pelléas in his premonition of his death, as well as with Mélisande, who in the same scene adopts ‘an instinct that pushes her to be more prudent about emotional outpourings with Pelléas’ (p. 17). Niccolai posits that such gestures are somewhat in opposition to nineteenth-century traditions in operatic staging, and suggests that Carré inspiringly adopted the novel practices of the more progressive Lugné-Poe (director of Maeterlinck's original play), as well as those of the renowned founder of modern mise en scéne, André Antoine.

The third section, titled ‘“New Light” in Pelléas et Mélisande’, engages ‘Carré's utilization of light with a clear psychological goal’ (p. 18). It opens with a brief history of progressive stage lighting, whereby late nineteenth-century trends in German theatre developed expressive modes for the use of electric light, modes that significantly piqued Carré's interests. Such interests are indicated in his expressed admiration of advances in electric lighting throughout theatres in Germany and Austria in the late 1880s, while bemoaning some of the contemporary limitations at the Paris Opera.

A central facet of this progressive lighting was the shift from footlights, whose artificial ‘from below’ light projection compromised the aesthetics of naturalist theatre so prized by Antoine and others, and the strategic blending of various types of light projection, namely diffuse light, ‘active’ or direct light, and backlighting, to work in harmony with the painted scenes, three-dimensional objects, and shadow. Such aesthetic concerns were written about by Swiss architect and stage-lighting theorist Adolphe Appia, best known for his theoretical approaches to staging Wagner operas.Footnote ² Niccolai notes that these lighting aesthetics manifest in Carré's staging for Pelléas et Mélisande.

The broader symbolic notion of the interplay between light and dark in Pelléas et Mélisande, be it manifested directly through the libretto's prose or through various harmonic shadings and choices of tonalities, has been addressed extensively, notably by Richard Langham Smith, David Grayson, Roger Nichols,Footnote ³ and François de Medici.Footnote ⁴ Niccolai discusses more particular stage-direction manifestations of this interplay. One interesting example is how ‘false’ footlighting was used exclusively for select, negatively ominous portrayals of Golaud, such as his boastful declaration of princedom, or during the moment when he questions Mélisande about her lost wedding ring. This, she notes, is in contrast to the warmer, brighter illuminations reserved for Mélisande at key points in the opera (pp. 21–2).

The manner in which lighting can unify separate but symbolically related events is also engaged. One particularly interesting example is the use of a direct-light moonbeam, used for the rare moments when Pelléas and Mélisande actually embrace. The first instance is when a moonbeam illuminates the beggars in the cave in Act II, a point at which Carré indicates ‘fear throws her into Pelléas’ arms’. The second is the ‘apogee at the moment when Pelléas and Mélisande embrace’ in the moonlight in Act IV, at which point Mélisande comments on the extreme length of their shadows. Niccolai notes ‘the feeling of disquiet which unites the two characters against all foreign presence’ links these two moments (p. 24).

The use of mobile lighting, particularly the lantern held by Golaud as he and Pélleas descend into subterranean passages of the castle in Act II, is strategically employed to psychological-portrayal ends. Niccolai describes how Carré, in the Durand manual, instructs Golaud's character to shake the lantern nervously, and how this act complements his troubled, repetitive calling out, ‘Pelléas, Pelléas!’ to the point where ‘the public feels the idea of tossing Pelléas into the chasm has crossed Golaud's mind’ (p. 26).

This book comprises a wonderfully insightful acquisition for anyone interested in forming a more complete understanding of all that went into the creation and production of Debussy's only finished opera. As Carré notes in his Souvenirs regarding Debussy's level of collaboration with the broader production team, ‘the presentation of the premiere was as much his work [Debussy's] as mine or that of Jusseaume and Bianchini.Footnote ⁵ Nothing was done that was not wished for, chosen or conceptualized by him or with him’ (p. 2).Footnote ⁶