Some years ago, at Glyndebourne, I found myself behind two big-business types, one of whom asked the other, “What are they playing tonight?” “Half a mo,” said his friend, consulting his programme, “something or other by Debussy.” “Ah,” replied the first, knowledgeably, “a modern chappie.” The comment might have seemed rather less fatuous in 1924, when enterprisingly – for extensive recordings of operas were then rare – HMV issued eight 78rpm sides of extracts from Pelleas. These proved successful enough for a somewhat longer series of extracts to be recorded three years later in the new electric process, now with the addition of a few pages of Golaud’s part (previously unheard); and it is this which is now offered on CD. As the sides were recorded at different times by different engineers in different acoustics, they are inevitably a bit of a job lot, and the extracts (totalling nearly 50 minutes) take little account of the action. They begin with the first two scenes of Act 2 (with a couple of big cuts), move to Act 3 missing Melisande’s solo in the tower, cut as Golaud interrupts the lovers’ play with her hair, skip the vault scene, picking up only as the half-brothers emerge into the open air, then entirely omit the terrible scene between Golaud and little Yniold and jump into Act 4 scene 2 (not scene 1, as the booklet says) for Arkel’s monologue (sung with great dignity by Willy Tubiana – what happened afterwards to him?), another cut to “Une grande innocence” and then, ignoring Yniold in the park, arrive midway through the love scene and, with only a small cut, continue to the end of the act. Vanni-Marcoux’s well-focused voice is not given much of an airing: the emphasis here is on the two young people. Panzera is a romantic, mellifluous Pelleas of great charm and sensitivity; Brothier is a girlish, bright-toned Melisande; except in the interludes the orchestra sound weedily undernourished, and ensemble is often precarious. They fare better in the disc’s fill-ups – songs by Duparc and two of Debussy’s Villon ballades in which they accompany Panzera. His beauty of tone, command of colour and nuance, expressive shaping of phrases and vividly illuminated words are models for all singers of the French repertoire. The transfers are clean, though with some loss of upper frequencies.
The 1945 Met recording (taken from NBC transcription discs and private recordings, with some flaws, like missing the start of Act 2’s first note and leaving clicks from surface scratches, etc.) is billed by Naxos under their “Immortal performances” banner, which is stretching things more than a little. For a start, there is a large cut (undeclared in the booklet) in Act 2, which omits Golaud’s appalled discovery that Melisande has lost his ring and her subsequent pretended search for it, with Pelleas, in the grotto: the scene with Yniold and the shepherd (dramatically unimportant) is also cut. Emil Cooper is a lumbering, unimaginative conductor, but he cannot be blamed for the mostly shallow recording of the orchestra (almost intolerable for much of Act 1). To change over from disc 1 to disc 2 only four minutes from the end of Act 3, during the questioning of Yniold, was a barbarously inartistic decision. Kipnis, possessor of a magnificent vocal organ, has terrible French: Tibbett’s vowels are little better, but at least he makes of Golaud a believable living character, unlike Singher, who seems uninvolved, completely lacks expressive gradations and poetry, addresses Melisande rather in the way for which Queen Victoria reproved Mr Gladstone, and (though only 40 at the time of recording) sounds too old for the young, impressionable Pelleas. There is an excellent Yniold who shows just the right childish reactions; but the real saving grace of this issue is Bidu Sayao, who is wholly enchanting as Melisande. She sounds unaffected and simple, convincingly capturing the moods of this fey creature, and making her every response appear totally natural: the “cheveux” monologue at the start of Act 3 has never sounded more spontaneous. Only she could be said to justify the label of an “immortal performance”.'