Looking back in 1902, Debussy explained the protracted genesis of his only finished opera: "For a long time I had been striving to write music for the theatre, but the form in which I wanted it to be was so unusual that after several attempts I had given up on the idea.

In the 1880s the young composer had toyed with several opera projects (Diane au Bois, Axël)[5] before accepting a libretto on the theme of El Cid, entitled Rodrigue et Chimène, from the poet and Wagner aficionado Catulle Mendès.

[7] In the words of critic Victor Lederer, "Desperate to sink his teeth into a project of substance, the young composer accepted the type of old-fashioned libretto he dreaded, filled with howlers and lusty choruses of soldiers calling for wine.

[13] Pelléas was a work that fascinated many other musicians of the time: both Gabriel Fauré and Jean Sibelius composed incidental music for the play, and Arnold Schoenberg wrote a tone poem on the theme.

"[13]Debussy abandoned work on Rodrigue and Chimène and he approached Maeterlinck in August 1893 via his friend, the poet Henri de Régnier for permission to set Pelléas.

[15] [16] In November, Debussy made a trip to Belgium, where he played excerpts from his work in progress to the famous violinist Eugène Ysaÿe in Brussels before visiting Maeterlinck at his home in Ghent.

When Messager became chief conductor of the Opéra-Comique theatre in 1898, his enthusiastic recommendations prompted Albert Carré, the head of the opera house, to visit Debussy and hear the work played on the piano at two sessions, in May 1898 and April 1901.

[23] Carré was keen on a new Scottish singer, Mary Garden, who had captivated the Parisian public when she had taken over the lead role in Gustave Charpentier's Louise shortly after its premiere in 1900.

[30] Mélisande was not the only role which caused casting problems: the child (Blondin) who was to play Yniold was not chosen until very later in the day and proved incapable of singing the part competently.

In the course of rehearsals it was discovered that the stage machinery of the Opéra-Comique was unable to cope with the scene changes and Debussy had rapidly to compose orchestral interludes to cover them, music which (according to Orledge) "proved the most expansive and obviously Wagnerian in the opera.

"[25] Many of the orchestra and cast were hostile to Debussy's innovative work and, in the words of Roger Nichols, "may not have taken altogether kindly to the composer's injunction, reported by Mary Garden, to 'forget, please, that you are singers'."

The audience also laughed at Yniold's repetition of the phrase "petit père" (little father)[31] and at Garden's Scottish accent: it appears she pronounced courage as curages, meaning "the dirt that gets stuck in drains".

[32] The censor, Henri Roujon, asked Debussy to make a number of cuts before the premiere, including Yniold's reference to Pelléas and Mélisande being "near the bed".

[34][35] The premiere received a warmer reception than the dress rehearsal because a group of Debussy aficionados counterbalanced the Opéra-Comique's regular subscribers, who found the work so objectionable.

Some accused the music of being "sickly and practically lifeless"[37] and of sounding "like the noise of a squeaky door or a piece of furniture being moved about, or a child crying in the distance.

"[38] Camille Saint-Saëns, a relentless opponent of Debussy's music, claimed he had abandoned his customary summer holidays so he could stay in Paris and "say nasty things about Pelléas.

"[41] The opera won a "cult following" among young aesthetes, and the writer Jean Lorrain satirised the Pelléastres who aped the costumes and hairstyles of Mary Garden and the rest of the cast.

As Roger Nichols writes, "[The] two qualities of being escapist and easily caricatured meant that in the brittle, post-war Parisian climate Pelléas could be written off as no longer relevant.

[49] In December 1962 (for the Debussy birth centenary) the Opéra-Comique gave several performances conducted by Manuel Rosenthal and directed by Pierre Bertin using the original Jusseaume-Ronsin sets from the 1902 premiere production.

Russian composers, notably Mussorgsky (whom Debussy admired), had experimented with setting prose opera libretti in the 1860s, but this was highly unusual in France (or Italy or Germany).

Debussy's example influenced many later composers who edited their own libretti from existing prose plays, e.g. Richard Strauss' Salome, Alban Berg's Wozzeck and Bernd Alois Zimmermann's Die Soldaten.

[62] Wagner had revolutionised 19th-century opera by his insistence on making his stage works more dramatic, by his increased use of the orchestra, his abolition of the traditional distinction between aria and recitative in favour of what he termed "endless melody", and by his use of leitmotifs, recurring musical themes associated with characters or ideas.

Despised by the conservative musical establishment, he was a cult figure in "avant-garde" circles, particularly among literary groups such as the Symbolists, who saw parallels between Wagner's concept of the leitmotif and their use of the symbol.

Several French composers had tried to write their own Wagnerian music dramas, including Emmanuel Chabrier (Gwendoline) and Ernest Chausson (Le roi Arthus).

Debussy was far from impressed by the results: "We are bound to admit that nothing was ever more dreary than the neo-Wagnerian school in which the French genius had lost its way among the sham Wotans in Hessian boots and the Tristans in velvet jackets.

Instead, he stays close to the rhythms of natural speech, making Pelléas part of a tradition which goes back to the French Baroque tragédies en musique of Rameau and Lully as well as the experiments of the very founders of opera, Peri and Caccini.

[34] Debussy also planned a version of Shakespeare's As You Like It with a libretto by Paul-Jean Toulet, but the poet's opium addiction meant he was too lazy to write the text.

Orphée-Roi (King Orpheus) was to be a riposte to Gluck's Orfeo ed Euridice which Debussy considered to "treat only the anecdotal, lachrymose aspect of the subject".

[73] But, according to Victor Lederer, for "shock value, neither [As You Like It nor Orphée] tops the Tristan project of 1907 [...] According to Léon Vallas, one of Debussy's early biographers, its 'episodic character... would have been related to the tales of chivalry, and diametrically opposed to the Germanic conception of Wagner.'

[75][76] The first recording of extended excerpts from the opera was made by the Grand Orchestre Symphonique du Grammophone under conductor Piero Coppola in 1924 and remade with the electrical process for improved sound in 1927.