The shape of water

Discover the show

A Conversation with Romeo Castellucci and Christian Longchamp

CL How would you describe the theatre of Maurice Maeterlinck, the great playwright of Pelléas et Mélisande?

RC: His theatre is indescribable; it communicates by concealing itself. I cannot deny the fascination I feel for the enigma that is Maeterlinck. Before this opportunity, I never dared to stage his work as it felt too close to my own sensibilities. It felt too intimate, too much like that of a brother.

CL Maeterlinck had found a brother figure in Debussy…

RC Maeterlinck’s libretto provides the perfect linguistic accompaniment to Debussy’s music. This seamless harmony is truly striking. One might say that the libretto and the music originate from the same heart. They are two languages that have become one, creating something greater than the sum of its parts. It is a tapestry of unprecedented quality. In this respect, it is perhaps unique in the history of opera.

CL Could you explain why you feel so moved by Pelléas et Mélisande?

RC This opera eschews content and delays the emergence of meaning. It embodies the strangeness of human life, revealing it to be different from what we thought we knew. The authors use the motif of water as a compositional metaphor and a language. They use a whole vocabulary of water, a form that rejects the object and takes the shape of its container — the strangeness of human life.

CLCould we talk a little about the concept of time in the piece?

RC This is a crucial issue for both composers. It has been said that time in music is circular, like the ripples in water. The great French philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch rightly stated that, in a literal sense, Debussy’s music ‘makes no sense’; in other words, it has no single direction or narrative. It is circular. In contrast, in the era in which our composers lived, time was being observed and questioned in scientific and philosophical circles — think of Einstein and Bergson, for example.

CL The characters themselves have a particular relationship with time.

RC While watching this opera, you are constantly struck by a feeling of déjà vu. The characters experience this, too, and find it unsettling. Maeterlinck deliberately scatters certain clues throughout the opera. According to Giuseppe Sinopoli, the realm of Allemonde is connected to Wotan's Valhalla and the other gods in Wagner's Ring. A brilliant observation. Following the destruction of the world of the gods, he argues that "the kingdom of Allemonde is a symbol of the world of men." This has given rise to "a completely rootless humanity in which nothingness swallows up every foundation of existence. When history and the order of the heavens collapse, we find ourselves in Allemonde. Time, suspended and spinning idly, dismantles life itself from its very foundation. We are trapped within this iron circle, from which the characters cannot escape. Even Pelléas's constant expression of his desire to go outdoors – "Tomorrow I shall leave" – underscores the existence of this tenacious, albeit invisible, circle.

CL Family is a crucial element in the world of Allemonde. Everything unfolds within an ancient and powerful family. With the birth of Mélisande’s daughter in Act V, we see the great-granddaughter of Arkel, the patriarch, whose name, as you like to emphasise, is very 'archaic'. The child will bear the weight of previous generations and relationships that neither Maeterlinck nor Debussy focus on, but which are significant. For example, Geneviève, the mother of Golaud and Pelléas, had her children by two different fathers who were brothers. These relationships are intentionally shrouded, and in them blood may mingle and be spilled.

RC Geneviève, the mother of Pelléas and Golaud, does not appear in the final scene of Mélisande’s daughter’s birth. This is no coincidence. Geneviève had welcomed Mélisande upon her arrival in Allemonde, and Mélisande will now leave her daughter to take up the torch.

CL When we leave Mélisande at the end of her life, she remains a mystery.

RC Like all great literary figures, she remains a mystery. We shall never know where she came from, what she wants — if anything — or who she really is. This is the genius of the writing. A veil is cast over things so that a direct gaze is impossible. One might say that everything here is elsewhere, not yet, no longer. The characters are phantoms, living in the reflection of mysterious past lives; they are newborns who are already adults. Mélisande seems to have arrived here by chance – or mistake – to divide and separate.

CLDoes she come to love as well?

RC That is why she is torn: she loves and is loved. She has this relationship with Pelléas, which is of an unprecedented purity. Their bodies never touch and they never look into each other’s eyes. They share a single kiss before Golaud's fatal attack. It is one of the most bewildering love stories, where absolute modesty symbolises an eroticism that goes beyond the limits of the flesh.

CL Could Mélisande be manipulated by a dark force that is using her?

RC I couldn’t say. It could be an angel from Ecclesiastes, or it could be a fish or a snake. The fact that she never closes her eyelids is a key detail: Mélisande’s gaze could be the gaze of Medusa.

CL Before her stand two brothers, embodying two opposing attitudes towards the incomprehensibility of this mystery. Golaud, the brother of Pelléas and husband of Mélisande, is a violent and hard-hearted character, yet he is perhaps the one most similar to us.

RC He manages to take Mélisande as his wife. The formality of the marriage contract marks the end of his one-sided love, which was never reciprocated. Mélisande continues to be sad.

CL Furthermore, we learn by chance – a fact later confirmed by Golaud when he threatens his brother – that Mélisande is pregnant.

RC The fact that Pelléas knows this and cries out "I have found you" renders their love sacrilegious. The sacrilege here is antithetical and means that their love is sacred, pure in its sterility. Love, both in life and in literature, is, by definition, wrong. True love, our authors tell us, cannot have a civil foundation and cannot be realised on earth.

CL How did you imagine, or rather dream up, the staging of your production? What emerged from your dreams?

RC If done rigorously, an obsessive listening of the music and relentless reading of the libretto can lead to a kind of amnesia regarding the object of observation. In this state, images emerge, free from philological concerns. This is not a process of learning or knowledge, however paradoxical that statement might seem.

CL If you had to pick, what is one word that has guided you?

RC The word ‘atmosphere,’ inspired by the ethereal quality of this music.

CL Distance is also important.

RC It is a cold, icy theatre. Mélisande makes her entrance by repeating her signature “Noli me tangere” four times. “Ne me touchez pas!” When the distances close, catastrophe strikes: Golaud tears at Mélisande’s hair and Pelléas dies the moment he kisses her. But beyond the characters’ behaviour, I would say that the observer too is compelled to see things through a mirror.

CL How did you interpret the cyclical nature of time?

RC Everything has already happened. We see repetitions of events that have already taken place, as in a 'mise en abyme'. In this museum of human life, the statues depict figures contemplating their past and future movements. 

CL Did you envisage a particular visual style for the scene in which the love between Pelléas and Mélisande is revealed, ultimately resulting in Pelléas's death at the hands of Golaud?

RC In order to overcome their inhibitions and finally touch one another, Pelléas and Mélisande require a theatrical device. They don someone else’s clothes to ‘play’ at making love. The characters they choose are carnivalesque masks of melancholy. They are characters who weep and laugh. They embody Mélisande’s extraordinary words: "Je suis heureuse, mais je suis triste." Maeterlinck is at his most powerful when he translates universal philosophical concepts into the simplest of words, capable of striking and piercing the heart of even a child.

CL Let's discuss the fairy-tale nature of this story.

RC It’s a very important aspect that I’ve tried to convey through the set design, using deliberately theatrical devices. I felt that evoking a childlike world where you believe in the fairy tale, with elements such as a forest rising from the ground or a moving castle, interspersed with scenes of almost complete emptiness, would be more interesting.

CL Little Yniold embodies innocence in this world.

RC Debussy entrusted a five-minute solo to a child. It is absolutely astonishing. I believe it is unique in the history of opera. Yniold is exposed to the fury of events in the adult world that he does not understand. In a heart-wrenching scene, Golaud forces Yniold to spy for him. Yniold’s gaze betrays his innocence and inability to lie.