It is not every night that the score gets a curtain call of its own. But then this centenary performance of Pelléas et Mélisande, given in the theatre where the work was born in 1902, was a one-off. So when the conductor, Marc Minkowski, held Debussy's score aloft at the end, the patrons of the Opéra Comique responded with enthusiastic veneration.
Given this sense of history it was a let-down that the theatre was only able to mark the event with a concert performance. After all, the Opéra Comique has put Pelléas on the stage some 450 times. You would think they could drum up some sets and costumes.
But Pelléas is unusually rewarding in concert, especially in a small theatre such as the Opéra Comique. With the orchestra on the stage, it was possible to concentrate on the dazzling originality of Debussy's scoring.
Minkowski had arranged his players to emphasise the fusion of particular groups of winds and strings. This allowed the audience to hear the fluid transparency of the musical texture far more clearly, not least the delicacy of Debussy's percussion writing. After a couple of early fluffs, the Mahler Chamber Orchestra played marvellously, revealing the work's subtle textures, from the most intimate filigree to the most violent outbursts.
Following John Eliot Gardiner, Minkowski used the shorter orchestral interludes that Debussy abandoned before the first performance. But there were strong echoes of 1902 in the casting, all native French save for the mysterious Mélisande.
The young baritone Jean-Sébastien Bou gave a classic and compelling Pelléas, with Jérôme Varnier's eloquent Arkel and Nathalie Stutzmann's Geneviève adding further reminders that this is an opera that always benefits from real French voices.
Once a memorable Pelléas, François Le Roux has now made the transition to Golaud. Lighter voiced than many Golauds, Le Roux dominated the evening dramatically.
Even more gripping was the Czech mezzo Magdalena Kozena's impassioned Mélisande. Instead of the traditional ice maiden, Kozena was flesh and blood in every phrase, the tone sometimes golden and sumptuous, sometimes pinched and whispered. The perfromance was riveting. Someone should put this cast on the stage.
