SOME THOUGHTS ON PELLEAS AND MELISANDE, AND LOUSTAT FORESHADOWING
I was listening to Come to Me by Daniel Hart from Season 1, and this time I was paying attention (lol)
Anway, these lyrics from the chorus struck me:
Your Pelléas, my Mélisande
In another chorus, the lines go:
Your Pelléas, my Mélisande
I had no idea about Pelleas or Melisande, so off to the internet I went sleuthing. Anyway, it’s a French libretto-based opera by Debussy, which you can read more about here, and it in turn was an adaptation of a Symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck, which you can read more about here. To give you the Cliff Notes from Wikipedia of the opera:
Prince Golaud finds Mélisande, a mysterious young woman, lost in a forest. He marries her and brings her back to the castle of his grandfather, King Arkel of Allemonde. Here Mélisande becomes increasingly attached to Golaud's younger half-brother Pelléas, arousing Golaud's jealousy. Golaud goes to excessive lengths to find out the truth about Pelléas and Mélisande's relationship, even forcing his own child, Yniold, to spy on the couple. Pelléas decides to leave the castle but arranges to meet Mélisande one last time and the two finally confess their love for one another. Golaud, who has been eavesdropping, rushes out and kills Pelléas. Mélisande dies shortly after, having given birth to a daughter, with Golaud still begging her to tell him "the truth."
More importantly perhaps, towards the end, from the Wiki of the original play:
She [Melisande] later dies after giving birth to an abnormally small girl.
I was really struck by why Lestat would use these lyrics, leaving aside his French roots. “Mourn each other/Ruin each other” - this suggests a relationship that’s already marked by loss, almost as if Lestat knew from the start that his story with Louis will end in sorrow. I think there’s a cyclical nature to Loustat in particular, they are forever haunted by each other’s loss, even when they are both still alive, but they are also doomed to “ruin” each other. We’ve seen how that plays out in the first two seasons, but I am curious to know how that would be next season onwards. Obviously they’re endgame in the context of the show, but from the perspective of eternity, are they doomed to repeat the cycle, or break it? Much to ruminate.
But obviously the most interesting bit of it for me was how Lestat frames himself as the female lover, Mélisande (my Mélisande) and Louis as Pelléas (Your Pelléas). More importantly, to go back to the original play, where “she [Melisande] later dies after giving birth to an abnormally small girl.” Obviously, the “abnormally small girl” is Claudia here.
In my reading, Lestat calling himself “Mélisande” and Louis “Pelléas” is an interesting gender inversion in the larger scheme of things, particularly as Claudia’s maker and thereby her “mother”. In the original Maeterlinck play, Mélisande is the ethereal, doomed figure whose love brings both tenderness and destruction. By identifying with her, Lestat takes on what is traditionally the “feminine” role, and in doing so, he reimagines their love through the lens of tragic romance. When we remember that Mélisande dies after giving birth to “an abnormally small girl”, Claudia in that sense becomes the living embodiment of that doomed Loustat love, a supernatural child born from Louis and Lestat’s union, who is predestined for tragedy. From a narrative framework, her death closes the loop that the song, which honestly I hadn’t realized, was foreshadowing of a love that creates, transforms, and ultimately destroys.
Anyway, I wanted to point this out as an excellent use of foreshadowing, but also the fact that both Daniel Hart and Sam Reid are credited as co-writers for this song. And maybe this is me projecting, but given how eloquently Sam speaks about TVC in general, I would like to believe that the Pelléas and Mélisande was his idea. Sam Reid, you’re like a very dear friend to me.
N.B. Please don’t come for me if you cannot stand genderbending of fictional characters. This is only my reading.
tangentwithtanner
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romaincrisis
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