In 2021, the German impresario Alexander Neef inaugurated his first season as general director of the Paris Opéra with Georges Enescu’s mesmerizing Œdipe, last performed by the company at its world premiere in 1936. It was a daring choice—thrillingly vindicated by the Lebanese-born director Wajdi Mouawad’s shamanic production. Now Mouawad and his Œdipe design colleagues Emmanuel Clolus (sets) and Emmanuelle Thomas (costumes) return for Pelléas et Mélisande, Claude Debussy’s symbolist fever dream of half-brothers enthralled by the same elusive waif. For a quarter century, the company has performed Pelléas in a staging by Robert Wilson that is all but sacrosanct. To replace it, only the work of a visionary will do. Based on Œdipe, we’re trusting Mouawad to deliver marvels we can’t begin to picture. And where could you find a finer cast today? We’re talking Sabine Devielhe (Mélisande), Huw Montague Rendall (Pelléas), Gordon Bintner (Golaud, the brother Mélisande betrays), Jean Teitgen (Arkel, the brother’s oracular blind grandfather), and Sophie Koch (Geneviève, their twice-married mother). Antonello Manacorda conducts. —Matthew Gurewitsch