Ogre's Opera

She was slim, pretty, and not yet 20. She stood shyly in the living room of a house in Paris' Rue du Bois. Bear-like Composer Claude Debussy ambled in, sat down at a piano with his back to her. "You are Mlle. Teyte?" "Yes, sir." "You are Mlle. Teyte--of the Opera-Comique?" "Yes, sir." "Eh bien, we will start here." Before they had run through the first act of his one & only opera Pelleas et Melisande, Debussy hustled out to shout to his wife, "Here is a Melisande!"

In the nine months Maggie Teyte studied with Debussy, he hardly said a word to her. ("He was an ogre," says Maggie, "and I was very cold--very English.") But she learned enough from him to take over Mary Garden's role at the Opera-Comique and make a name for herself as Melisande. That was 40 years ago. Last week, although they had often cheered her in recital, Manhattan operagoers finally got to hear Maggie in the role that had first won her fame. It was the first time she had ever sung the full opera in the U.S. Last week, Maggie's acting was stiff in spots; the role was obviously tiring for her. But backed by a cast that ' made every word and nuance understandable, and by Jean Morel's fine conducting, she gave a performance for a sellout City Opera audience that few would soon forget. In one of the noisiest ovations of the year, they let her know it.

Maggie Teyte will sing Melisande four more times at City Center, return to Britain for the second Edinburgh Festival in August, and then perhaps will make a farewell tour of the U.S. Says she: "Dammit all, one can't go on forever."

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