accurate description of the atmosphere leading into the second act. Pelléas and Mélisande are sitting by the well. Their love is pure, cautious. As spectators, we are not angry with them, but feel compassion for the impossible situation they were forced into. At the end of the fourth act, Golaud stabbs Pelléas to death and wounds Mélisande and himself. His injury is serious, but he will survive. Mélisande though, is barely injured, but she will not survive. At the beginning of the fifth act, Fauré presents a glorious funeral march, implying what we already knew from the opening of the play. “This trifling wound is not enough to cause her death, it would not kill a bird…”, says the physician taking care of Mélisande (in the English translation by Erving Winslow). “You are not guilty of her death, prince […] She could not have lived. She was born by chance…and she dies by chance” Oded Shnei-Dor
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