Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis: Song, Opera, and the Death of the Subject

Abstract

Asummary of the action narrated in Debussy's Trois Chansons de Bilitis might run as follows: Two young lovers share a moment of inexpressibly intimate communion; the young man speaks of being bound up in the maiden's flowing tresses; she encounters a strange older man beside aforest spring. Readers familiar with Debussy's Pelldas et Milisande will note a striking resemblance to three specific scenes in the opera, in Acts IV, III, and I, respectively. These thematic resemblances can hardly have arisen coincidentally: Debussy composed the song cycle in 1895-98, immediately following the completion of the draft of his opera. Undoubtedly the most intriguing link between the two works is their similar protagonist, a mysterious young woman caught up in a web of destructive erotic relationships. Indeed, we might regard Bilitis as the lyrical twin of Mdlisande, translated from opera into the sphere of art song. Viewed thus, she may perhaps serve as the pivotal figure in a comparison of Debussy's work in these two disparate genres. A fundamental distinction between art song and opera in the nineteenth century lies in the treatment of what, in Hegelian terms, we might call the individual subject. The genre of solo song, which drew its nourishment from the confessional, introspective tone of Romantic lyric verse, clearly reflects the demand of the age for individual subjective expression. Conversely, the history of nineteenthcentury opera, under the inescapable influence of Wagner, moved in