Pelléas and Mélisande

Pelléas and Mélisande (French: Pelléas et Mélisande) is a Symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck about the forbidden, doomed love of the title characters. It was first performed in 1893. The main theme is the cycle of creation and destruction. Pelléas and Mélisande form a bond of love, which, step by step, cascades to its fatal end. They are so much in love that they disregard the value of marriage, provoking the ire of Anteros, who brings revenge and death, which restores order.

The work was very popular. It was adapted as an opera by the composer Claude Debussy, and it inspired other contemporary composers, for instance, Gabriel Fauré, Arnold Schoenberg, and Jean Sibelius.

The play was peformed by the Witwatersrand University Players in 1928 in Johannesburg.