Dark, discreet, almost on tiptoes, Jonathan Miller's production of "Pelleas et Melisande" made its way back to the stage of the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night. Gloom and decay, and most of all quietness, are the watchwords of this five-year-old creation.

The far distant castle of Maeterlinck's original play becomes a late-19th-century manor house more dead than alive. A four-sided facade revolves slowly on its way from event to event. Forest and garden scenes seem trapped indoors. Black and white are the colors. Those onstage are like sleepwalkers, largely unaware of the quiet disaster toward which their separate paths are carrying them.

No one makes better use of the size and depth of the Met stage than Mr. Miller. Scenes begin at its farthest recesses; we see them forming from the corner of the eye and follow their slow progress to the front of the stage. The discreet choreography of house servants gives the opera almost as much tone and character as the principals themselves.

Debussy gave us an opera like no other. In it, every accepted wisdom of the medium is contravened. Opera, by nature, is forward, bold and larger than life; the reductive nature of music necessitates it. "Pelleas," on the other hand, is reticent and oblique. Its denizens chat idly and assess the weather, but it is at precisely these moments that the listener's consciousness is most deeply penetrated. Melisande is a phantom heroine, for we know nothing of her, only that she appears from nowhere in Scene 1 and in death disappears, to quote the text, "without a word."

There are no arias or set pieces. The vocal lines ride atop the orchestra, like rafters swept back and forth according to the tide. Debussy's orchestra, indeed, is the giver and withholder of all things. Its beauty is astonishing, and James Levine's conducting on Monday wisely sanded away the surface gloss. Arkel, king and grandfather, is the one clear head among this company of lost souls, although Mr. Miller's servants are mutely knowing as well. Golaud, Arkel's grandson, finds Melisande in the forest, marries her and watches her inexorable drift toward his half-brother, Pelleas, whom he ultimately kills out of jealousy.

Seldom if ever in opera has blood passion been so subtly expressed and so deeply felt as a result. The indirection comes by way of the orchestra pit. If those onstage have barely an inkling of what is happening to them, the orchestra knows all, confiding in the audience but in no one else. It is the paradox of helplessness and knowingness that gives this work its special poignancy.

It can be said that "Pelleas et Melisande" is by proxy Wagner's greatest success, for in it the gathering of art forms into a unity achieves a perfection that Wagnerian gluttony made impossible. On the other hand, "Pelleas," like the body of Debussy's music, is a little like Melisande herself, coming from nowhere, leading to nothing. Debussy, in other words, has no antecedents and no heirs, and this opera is his solitary gift to the genre.

Monday's cast might have you believe that current French musical culture had abandoned its heritage to the Anglo-Saxons. Mr. Miller is English. Mr. Levine, like most of this splendid cast, is American. In the title roles, Dawn Upshaw sang touchingly, while Dwayne Croft's baritone was a wonder of liquid beauty and controlled expressiveness. Willard White, dignified and fluent as Golaud, was scarcely less good. Robert Lloyd's Arkel was perhaps the best example of how clear delivery can make a big theater seem smaller than it actually is.

Nadine Denize sang Genevieve with appealing restraint. James Danner did well as the boy Yniold. The others were Alfred Walker and Richard Vernon. "Pelleas et Melisande" repeats at Saturday's matinee and has three performances after that. It should not be missed.