English National Opera Guides are ideal companions to the opera. They provide stimulating introductory articles together with the complete text of each opera in English and the original.

In this guide to Pelléas and Mélisande, Maeterlinck’s original play is reprinted in full, so that the opera lover can read the scenes that Debussy did not set to music. Hugh Macdonald’s much praised English translation is published here for the first time, with an essay uncovering the musical roots of Pelléas and Mélisande and illustrating its importance to the music of the twentieth century. Alain Raitt, author of several studies of symbolist writers, evaluates Maeterlinck’s status as a dramatist, and Roger Nichols analyses the score. Proust’s short pastiche of the opera and Arthur Symons’s review of the first English performances challenge us to come to terms with this eternally intriguing masterpiece.

Contents: Something Borrowed, Something New, Hugh Macdonald; A Musical Synopsis, Roger Nichols; Maeterlinck and the Theatre, Alan Raitt; Profound or Pretentious?, Nicholas John; Pelléas et Mélisande: text by Maurice Maeterlinck; Pelléas and Mélisande: English Translation by Hugh Macdonald