Pelléas et Mélisande

Fauré composed the incidental music for Maeterlinck’s play in the spring of 1898 at the request of the English actress Mrs Patrick Campbell (Beatrice Stella Campbell, née Cornwallis-West). To save time, he delegated the orchestration to his former pupil Charles Koechlin. The first performance, given at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London on 21 June 1898, with Fauré conducting, was a great success with the public and the critics. With the exception of the anonymous critic of The Times, journalists judged Fauré’s music to be perfectly in keeping with the drama. But it is not easy to know what exactly was played up to the First World War: as the productions progressed, changes were made to the manuscript and the material. The critical edition by Roger Nichols and Otfrid Nies for the publishers Alphonse Leduc (2016) shed light on the history of the eighteen numbers composed by Fauré. The incidental music consists of seven principal movements, a few shorter numbers, and brief interludes lasting just a few bars (some of which were heard several times in the course of the play). In 1900 Fauré reworked the orchestration of three pieces –Prélude, Fileuse and La Mort de Mélisande – to form an orchestral suite. Camille Chevillard conducted the première at the Concerts Lamoureux on 3 February 1901. Then in 1909 the Sicilienne was added, in Koechlin’s orchestration, and placed in third position between La Fileuse and La Mort de Mélisande. It was in this four-movement form that the suite became established in the concert repertoire. La Fileuse and the Sicilienne have also been transcribed on numerous occasions.