Claude Debussy's five act Pelléas et Mélisande is based on Maurice Maeterlinck's Symbolist play and took the composer ten years to complete. Much of that time was spent wrestling with the music of author/composer Richard Wagner, who at the time was everywhere. But rather than produce something under the influence of Wagner ("I'm rid of the Rheingold"), Debussy opted for a "post-Wagner" designation. Not that it eased his mind any: "The colour of my soul is iron-grey and sad bats wheel about the steeple of my dreams."
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