A 19th-century Opera Comes Alive with a Dreamlike Glass Box

Pelleas and Melisande is a bit of a blur. Director Yuval Sharon uses that mesmerizing, lush quality of Claude Debussy’s 19th-century opera score about a dark medieval love triangle to create a Cleveland Orchestra production that activates viewers’ imaginations May 2-6. “The score of Pelleas is so impressionistic, in a way, hazy,” he says, “where it is like a dream landscape, where some things are a very sharp focus and a lot of things are in and out of focus and almost abstract realism.” To mimic the suspense between dream and reality, Sharon had a glass box created onstage that holds opera actors and dancers, and fills and clears of fog as the music expands and contracts. “We hope to open the listeners’ imagination to what the music is really telling us,” Sharon says. “Limiting the space allows us to create a much larger universe.” Severance Hall, 11001 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, 216-231-1111, clevelandorchestra.com