Claude Debussy
Debussy's opera Pelleas et Melisande received its first performance at the Opera-Comique, the Salle Favart, on 30 April 1902.
Opéra-Comique (Salle Favart)
Still standing
Hours or admission
Still the same
The Salle Favart, where Debussy's only completed opera, Pelléas et Mélisande, was first performed on 30 April 1902 — after nearly a decade of work and a dress rehearsal that turned into a public row.
- 1 place Boieldieu, 75002 Paris
- The current Salle Favart opened in 1898
Illustration
The place, briefly
The Opéra-Comique is the smaller and more adventurous of the two great Paris opera houses, and its house name — the Salle Favart — belongs to the building on the place Boieldieu. The current theatre is the third on the site; the two before it burned down, the second catastrophically in 1887. The present hall opened in 1898.
On 30 April 1902 it gave the first performance of Claude Debussy's Pelléas et Mélisande, which he had been working at for the better part of ten years. It is an opera that deliberately refuses almost everything opera audiences expected: no arias to speak of, no set pieces, a vocal line that follows the contours of spoken French, and an orchestra that suggests rather than declares.
It did not arrive quietly. Maurice Maeterlinck, whose play the libretto came from, had wanted his partner cast in the title role and was furious when Mary Garden got it instead; he attacked the production publicly before it opened. The dress rehearsal was disrupted, and the early reviews split hard between people who thought the work incomprehensible and people who understood immediately that it had changed what an opera could be.
The theatre is in full working use and the ordinary way to see it is to buy a ticket for a performance.
Key facts
- Salle Favart
- The third on the site, opened 1898
- First performed 30 April 1902
- Debussy worked on the opera for close to a decade
- A working opera house — tickets for performances
In images
Timeline
The present Salle Favart opens after its predecessor burned.
Pelléas et Mélisande receives its first performance on 30 April.
On the map
Questions before you go
Where did Pelléas et Mélisande première?
At the Opéra-Comique, the Salle Favart on the place Boieldieu in the 2nd arrondissement, on 30 April 1902.
Can you visit the Opéra-Comique?
Yes — it is a working national opera house. Buying a ticket for a performance is the usual way in.
Did Debussy write other operas?
Pelléas et Mélisande is his only completed opera. He began several others and finished none of them.
People who knew this place
Within walking distance
Maison Dorée
The luxury restaurant on the boulevard des Italiens whose upper rooms housed the eighth and last Impressionist exhibition in 1886 — the one Camille Pissarro helped organise, and where he brought the Neo-Impressionists into the group.
Visit the place
Salle Le Peletier
The theatre that housed the Paris Opera until it burned down in 1873. Its stage, rehearsal rooms and subscribers' foyer are the world behind Degas's dancers — and he went on painting it from memory long after it was ash.
Visit the place
Galerie Durand-Ruel, 11 rue Le Peletier
Paul Durand-Ruel's gallery, where the second Impressionist exhibition was held in 1876 — the dealer who kept buying the group's work through the years when almost nobody else would.
Visit the place
Grand Hôtel de Russie, 1 rue Drouot
The vanished hotel on the corner of the rue Drouot and the Grands Boulevards where Camille Pissarro took a large room in February 1897 and painted sixteen canvases of the boulevards below without moving.
Visit the placeReferences
References
The sources below include histories, archival materials, scholarly research, and official records that informed this page. They document Opéra-Comique (Salle Favart), the people connected to it, and its place in Paris.
1Paris's Best-Kept Secret: the Opéra Comique
WebsiteOpéra ComiqueUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Opéra-Comique (Salle Favart) page.
2Claude Debussy
WebsiteOpéra national de ParisUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Opéra-Comique (Salle Favart) page.
3Pelléas et Mélisande
WebsiteOpéra-ComiqueUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Opéra-Comique (Salle Favart) page.
4Claude Debussy: Biographie
WebsiteIRCAM–Centre PompidouUsed forWeb source consulted for documented facts and historical context presented on the Opéra-Comique (Salle Favart) page.
i
Why these sources are here
These references provide the documented foundation for this page's history and context. Claim-level citations remain attached to the specific claims they support.
Explore more resourcesNewsletter
Paris, one address at a time.
The cafés, studios, and walk-up flats where the work was made — one story from the map in every letter.