Pelléas et Mélisande (play)

Pelléas et Mélisande is a famous Symbolist play by Maurice Maeterlinck about the forbidden, doomed love of the title characters.

The play has been the basis of several pieces of music. Perhaps the best known is the Impressionist opera by Claude Debussy. Earlier, in 1898, Gabriel Fauré had written incidental music for the play, from which he later extracted a suite. Jean Sibelius also wrote incidental music for it in 1905. The story is also the basis of Arnold Schoenberg's early symphonic poem Pelleas und Melisande of 1902–03.