Pelléas et Mélisande Tickets

Grand Théâtre de Genève, Geneva, Switzerland

Scene 6 from the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande"

Scene 1 from the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande"

Scene 2 from the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande"

Scene 3 from the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande"

Scene 4 from the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande"

Scene 5 from the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande"

Scene 7 from the opera "Pelléas et Mélisande"

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Available Dates: 26 Oct - 4 Nov, 2025 (5 events)

Important Info

Type: Opera

City: Geneva, Switzerland

Duration: 3h 5min with 1 interval

Intervals: 1

Sung in: French

Titles in: French,English

Ticket delivery: E-Tickets

E-tickets: Print at home or at the box office of the event if so specified. You will find more information in your booking confirmation email.

Can I choose my seats?

You can only select the category, and not the exact seats.
If you order 2 or 3 tickets: your seats will be next to each other.
If you order 4 or more tickets: your seats will be next to each other, or, if this is not possible, we will provide a combination of groups of seats (at least in pairs, for example 2+2 or 2+3).

Cast

Performers

Choose the date to see the peformers

Creators

Composer: Claude Debussy

Director: Damien Jalet

Librettist: Maurice Maeterlinck

Director: Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui

Overview

As with the streamed 2021 production, Marie Eriksmoen with be a fragile, tender Mélisande opposite Leigh Melrose’s powerful Golaud. Björn Bürger, an outstanding Prince Andrej in War and Peace at the GTG in 2021, will bring his elegant baritone and intense stage presence to Pelléas.

Lost in a forest, Golaud meets a mysterious young girl crying by a fountain. She has fled from those who were harming her and her name is Mélisande. Golaud persuades her to marry him and come with him to Germany, where his father King Arkel welcomes them into his dark castle. Misery and famine reign in Germany, but in the castle, essential things are kept silent. Its inhabitants are prey to trauma and repressed desires. It is only with Pelléas, Golaud’s half-brother, that Mélisande finds the shared awareness that the essential is not always the visible. A fatal triangle thus develops between Mélisande and the two brothers.

Maurice Maeterlinck’s play Pelléas and Mélisande is one of the key works of the Symbolist movement, in which so many other Belgian artists such as Émile Verhaeren, Georges Rodenbach and James Ensor distinguished themselves.

Claude Debussy was one of the many musicians to succumb to its timeless mystery, and asked Maeterlinck to adapt the play into a libretto for the only true opera that he would write: “I wanted the action never to stop, but for it to be continuous and uninterrupted. I never allowed my music to hasten or delay the movement of my characters’ feelings and passions due to technical demands.” Thanks to the anti-rhetoric character of Pelléas, who carefully avoids all emphatic gesture, it has become the flagship of anti-Wagnerians, even though Debussy’s opera constitutes an audible modernist response to Tristan und Isolde and Parsifal.

Streamed on Grand Théâtre Digital during the Covid epidemic, in January 2021, this staging which unites Ballet du GTG director Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui and the Ballet’s associate artist Damien Jalet with legendary visual artist and performer Marina Abramović, is finally arriving in front of the place de Neuve audience. In it, the creators draw their material from the continuous circle of life and its inherent link to the cosmos, following Debussy in refusing all illustration, but throwing rays of cosmic light here and there on the characters’ invisible energies and hidden emotions. Eight dancers from the Ballet du GTG accompany and express the inner feelings of the soloists, while the grande dame of avant- garde haute couture Iris van Herpen dresses their invisible meshes. Generating the mysterious frisson which makes this fragile drama so compelling is acclaimed Slovak conductor Juraj Valčuha, leading the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande for the very first time.

Co-production with Opera Ballet Vlaanderen and Théâtres de la Ville de Luxembourg

History

Premiere of this production: 30 April 1902, Opéra-Comique, Paris

Pelléas et Mélisande (Pelléas and Mélisande) is an opera in five acts with music by Claude Debussy. The French libretto was adapted from Maurice Maeterlinck's symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande. It was premiered at the Salle Favart in Paris by the Opéra-Comique on 30 April 1902 with Jean Périer as Pelléas and Mary Garden as Mélisande in a performance conducted by André Messager, who was instrumental in getting the Opéra-Comique to stage the work. The only opera Debussy ever completed, it is considered a landmark in 20th-century music.

Synopsis

Act 1

Scene 1: A forest

Prince Golaud, grandson of King Arkel of Allemonde, has become lost while hunting in the forest. He discovers a frightened, weeping girl sitting by a spring in which a crown is visible. She reveals her name is Mélisande but nothing else about her origins and refuses to let Golaud retrieve her crown from the water. Golaud persuades her to come with him before the forest gets dark.

Scene 2: A room in the castle

Six months have passed. Geneviève, the mother of the princes Golaud and Pelléas, reads a letter to the aged and nearly blind King Arkel. It was sent by Golaud to his brother Pelléas. In it Golaud reveals that he has married Mélisande, although he knows no more about her than on the day they first met. Golaud fears that Arkel will be angry with him and tells Pelléas to find how he reacts to the news. If the old man is favourable then Pelléas should light a lamp from the tower facing the sea on the third day; if Golaud does not see the lamp shining, he will sail on and never return home. Arkel had planned to marry the widowed Golaud to Princess Ursule in order to put an end to "long wars and ancient hatreds", but he bows to fate and accepts Golaud's marriage to Mélisande. Pelléas enters, weeping. He has received a letter from his friend Marcellus, who is on his deathbed, and wants to travel to say goodbye to him. Arkel thinks Pelléas should wait for the return of Golaud, and also reminds Pelléas of his own father, lying sick in bed in the castle. Geneviève tells Pelléas not to forget to light the lamp for Golaud.

Scene 3: Before the castle

Geneviève and Mélisande walk in the castle grounds. Mélisande remarks how dark the surrounding gardens and forest are. Pelléas arrives. They look out to sea and notice a large ship departing and a lighthouse shining, Mélisande foretells that it will sink. Night falls. Geneviève goes off to look after Yniold, Golaud's young son by his previous marriage. Pelléas attempts to take Melisande's hand to help her down the steep path but she refuses saying that she is holding flowers. He tells her he might have to go away tomorrow. Mélisande asks him why.

Act 2

Scene 1: A well in the park

It is a hot summer day. Pelléas has led Mélisande to one of his favourite spots, the "Blind Men's Well". People used to believe it possessed miraculous powers to cure blindness but since the old king's eyesight started to fail, they no longer come there. Mélisande lies down on the marble rim of the well and tries to see to the bottom. Her hair loosens and falls into the water. Pelléas notices how extraordinarily long it is. He remembers that Golaud first met Mélisande beside a spring and asks if he tried to kiss her at that time but she does not answer. Mélisande plays with the ring Golaud gave her, throwing it up into the air until it slips from her fingers into the well. Pelléas tells her not to be concerned but she is not reassured. He also notes that the clock was striking twelve as the ring dropped into the well. Mélisande asks him what she should tell Golaud. He replies, "the truth."

Scene 2: A room in the castle

Golaud is lying in bed with Mélisande at the bedside. He is wounded, having fallen from his horse while hunting. The horse suddenly bolted for no reason as the clock struck twelve. Mélisande bursts into tears and says she feels ill and unhappy in the castle. She wants to go away with Golaud. He asks her the reason for her unhappiness but she refuses to say. When he asks her if the problem is Pelléas, she replies that he is not the cause but she does not think he likes her. Golaud tells her not to worry: Pelléas can behave oddly and he is still very young. Mélisande complains about the gloominess of the castle, today was the first time she saw the sky. Golaud says that she is too old to be crying for such reasons and takes her hands to comfort her and notices the wedding ring is missing. Golaud becomes furious, Mélisande claims she dropped it in a cave by the sea where she went to collect shells with little Yniold. Golaud orders her to go and search for it at once before the tide comes in, even though night has fallen. When Mélisande replies that she is afraid to go alone, Golaud tells her to take Pelléas along with her.

Scene 3: Before a cave

Pelléas and Mélisande make their way down to the cave in pitch darkness. Mélisande is frightened to enter, but Pelléas tells her she will need to describe the place to Golaud to prove she has been there. The moon comes out lighting the cave and reveals three beggars sleeping in the cave. Pelléas explains there is a famine in the land. He decides they should come back another day.

Act 3

Scene 1: One of the towers of the castle

Mélisande is at the tower window, singing a song (Mes longs cheveux) as she combs her hair. Pelléas appears and asks her to lean out so he can kiss her hand as he is going away the next day. He cannot reach her hand but her long hair tumbles down from the window and he kisses and caresses it instead. Pelléas playfully ties Mélisande's hair to a willow tree in spite of her protests that someone might see them. A flock of doves takes flight. Mélisande panics when she hears Golaud's footsteps approaching. Golaud dismisses Pelléas and Mélisande as nothing but a pair of children and leads Pelléas away.

Scene 2: The vaults of the castle

Golaud leads Pelléas down to the castle vaults, which contain the dungeons and a stagnant pool which has "the scent of death". He tells Pelléas to lean over and look into the chasm while he holds him safely. Pelléas finds the atmosphere stifling and they leave.

Scene 3: A terrace at the entrance of the vaults

Pelléas is relieved to breathe fresh air again. It is noon. He sees Geneviève and Mélisande at a window in the tower. Golaud tells Pelléas that there must be no repeat of the "childish game" between him and Mélisande last night. Mélisande is pregnant and the least shock might disturb her health. It is not the first time he has noticed there might be something between Pelléas and Mélisande but Pelléas should avoid her as much as possible without making this look too obvious.

Scene 4: Before the castle

Golaud sits with his little son, Yniold, in the darkness before dawn and questions him about Pelléas and Mélisande. The boy reveals little that Golaud wants to know since he is too innocent to understand what he is asking. He says that Pelléas and Mélisande often quarrel about the door and that they have told Yniold he will one day be as big as his father. Golaud is puzzled when learning that they (Pelléas and Mélisande) never send Yniold away because they are afraid when he is not there and keep on crying in the dark. He admits that he once saw Pelléas and Mélisande kiss "when it was raining". Golaud lifts his son on his shoulders to spy on Pelléas and Mélisande through the window but Yniold says that they are doing nothing other than looking at the light. He threatens to scream unless Golaud lets him down again. Golaud leads him away.

Act 4

Scene 1: A room in the castle

Pelléas tells Mélisande that his father is getting better and has asked him to leave on his travels. He arranges a last meeting with Mélisande by the Blind Men's Well in the park.

Scene 2: The same

Arkel tells Mélisande how he felt sorry for her when she first came to the castle "with the strange, bewildered look of someone constantly awaiting a calamity". But now that is going to change and Mélisande will "open the door to a new era that I foresee". He asks her to kiss him. Golaud bursts in with blood on his forehead — he claims it was caused by a thorn hedge. When Mélisande tries to wipe the blood away, he angrily orders her not to touch him and demands his sword. He says that another peasant has died of starvation. Golaud notices Mélisande is trembling and tells her he is not going to kill her with the sword. He mocks the "great innocence" Arkel says he sees in Mélisande's eyes. He commands her to close them or "I will shut them for a long time." He tells Mélisande that she disgusts him and drags her around the room by her hair. When Golaud leaves, Arkel asks if he is drunk. Mélisande simply replies that he does not love her any more. Arkel comments: "If I were God, I would have pity on the hearts of men".

Scene 3: A well in the park

Yniold tries to lift a boulder to free his golden ball, which is trapped between it and some rocks. As darkness falls, he hears a flock of sheep suddenly stop bleating. A shepherd explains that they have turned onto a path that doesn't lead back to the sheepfold, but does not answer when Yniold asks where they will sleep. Yniold goes off to find someone to talk to.

Scene 4: The same

Pelléas arrives alone at the well. He is worried that he has become deeply involved with Mélisande and fears the consequences. He knows he must leave but first, he wants to see Mélisande one last time and tell her things he has kept to himself. Mélisande arrives. She was able to slip out without Golaud's noticing. At first she is distant but when Pelléas tells her he is going away she becomes more affectionate. After admitting his love for her, Mélisande confesses that she has loved him since she first saw him. Pelléas hears the servants shutting the castle gates for the night. Now they are locked out, but Mélisande says that it is for the better. Pelléas is resigned to fate too. After the two kiss, Mélisande hears something moving in the shadows. It is Golaud, who has been watching the couple from behind a tree. Golaud strikes down a defenseless Pelléas with his sword and kills him. Mélisande is also wounded but she flees into the woods saying to a dying Pelléas that she does not have courage.

Act 5

A bedroom in the castle

Mélisande sleeps in a sick bed after giving birth to her child. The doctor assures Golaud that despite her wound, her condition is not serious. Overcome with guilt, Golaud claims he has killed for no reason. Pelléas and Mélisande merely kissed "like a brother and sister". Mélisande wakes and asks for a window to be opened so she can see the sunset. Golaud asks the doctor and Arkel to leave the room so he can speak with Mélisande alone. He blames himself for everything and begs Mélisande's forgiveness. Golaud presses Mélisande to confess her forbidden love for Pelléas. She maintains her innocence in spite of Golaud's increasingly desperate pleas to her to tell the truth. Arkel and the doctor return. Arkel tells Golaud to stop before he kills Mélisande, but he replies "I have already killed her". Arkel hands Mélisande her newborn baby girl but she is too weak to lift the child in her arms and remarks that the baby does not cry and that she will live a sad existence. The room fills with serving women, although no one can tell who has summoned them. Mélisande quietly dies. At the moment of death, the serving women fall to their knees. Arkel comforts the sobbing Golaud.

Venue Info

Grand Théâtre de Genève - Geneva
Boulevard du Théâtre 11

Grand Théâtre de Genève is the main opera house of Geneva. The venue is a majestic building, towering over Place Neuve, officially opened in 1876, partly destroyed by fire in 1951 and reopened in 1962, after extensive refurbishments, which houses the largest stage in Switzerland. As an institution, it is the largest production and host theatre in French-speaking Switzerland, featuring opera and dance performances, recitals, concerts and, occasionally, theatre.

Built in 1879, the Grand Théâtre de Genève is the largest artistic stage in Switzerland and home to the Geneva opera house and the Geneva Ballet Company. Every season, it features nine performance runs of opera, three of dance and a broad range of recitals and cultural, youth-friendly or festive events to develop its audience and honour its public service mission. Gutted by fire in 1951, the building and the front of house retain its original Beaux-Arts style whereas the wood-panelled auditorium, completed in 1961, seats 1500 and boasts a spectacular metalwork security curtain that extends into the ceiling, where 1200 glass stars shine as the house lights. The Grand Théâtre de Genève employs its own opera chorus of 40 singers and has an artistic partnership with the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande for its opera season. Since 2019, Aviel Cahn is the general manager of the Grand Théâtre de Genève and since 2022, the Geneva Ballet Company is directed by Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui. The Grand Théâtre de Genève was named Opera Company of the Year in 2020 (Opernwelt).

Designed by JacquesElisée Goss on a design by Henri Sylvestre, the Grand Théâtre de Genève opened in 1879, in a BeauxArts and Second Empirestyle building, with a horseshoeshaped auditorium. In 1951, there was a terrible fire, during a rehearsal of Wagner’s Walkyrie: the auditorium, stage area and roofs were destroyed. It reopened in 1962 after a reconstruction project led by Charles Schopfer, Marco ZavelaniRossi and Jacek Stryjenski (the latter having designed the huge ceiling inspired by the Milky Way called Alto). The foyers and adjoining areas were then hurriedly restored. The stage area was modernized in 1997 and the stage decks in 2006. Between 2016 and 2019, the Grand Théâtre was closed for renovations and its activities were held at the Opéra des Nations. The Place de Neuve site underwent an architectural renovation (new rehearsal rooms and changing rooms in the basement, meeting room in the attic area), also involving security (upgrading of comfort and fire standards) and heritage items. The foyers and hallways were refurbished, tapestries repaired, damaged marble and faux marble surfaces were restored and the parquet floors recreated. Several modern improvements were introduced, such as the box office reception desks and a Milky Waytype lighting introduced in the Upper Circle and Basement bars. The building reopened on 12 February 2019 with Wagner’s Das Rheingold and an Open Doors day followed by a Mapping on the place de Neuve on 23 March 2019 gathering 14000 people.

In 1962, the Grand Théâtre de Genève acquired a permanent ballet company, made up of 22 artists, offering two original choreographic creations per season. Collaborating with choreographers of international renown, over the course of its performances, it has built a worldwide reputation for itself. Today, whilst the premieres are always held in Geneva, the Geneva Ballet frequently performs outside Switzerland (France, Italy, United States, Russia, Australia, China, Brazil, South Africa…). From the 22–23 Season, the Ballet is under the management of Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.

Founded in 1962, the Choir of the Grand Théâtre de Genève is an ensemble of forty-two professional singers from a wide variety of nationalities.
An essential part of the artistic department of the Grand Théâtre de Genève, the Choir takes part in the productions that contribute to the institution’s renowned reputation. For certain specific productions requiring a larger ensemble, additional professional singers join the group, allowing for flexibility and adaptability according to the program’s demands.
Thanks to the quality of its performances and its dedication, the Choir of the Grand Théâtre is not only recognized for its level of excellence by the press, but its performances are also praised by directors, conductors, and audiences alike. In 2023, the Choir was once again nominated for the Opera Awards.