Demystifying Debussy: on the surface, Pelleas et Melisande seems the most delicate of scores--but over the years, a number of fine conductors have given it an aggressive, muscular treatment.(Critical Essay)

Understated, ambiguous, muted, elusive, insinuating--Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande is held up famously as the quintessential "Impressionistic" opera, a musical counterpart to the artwork of Monet, Manet, Pissarro, Redon, Degas and Renoir. Like the canvases of those painters, the work is often said to blend light, colors and moods to create a delicately perfumed dream world of vague, shadowy mystery, where storybook people sing in hushed tones and things are seldom what they seem.

That's the conventional take on Pelleas et Melisande, and it's true as far as it goes. But that simplistic view has long been contested by many conductors, and the composer was on their ...