Brilliant casting unlocks the plot of Massenet’s Manon at the Met
The key to Jules Massenet’s opera Manon – first performed at the Opéra-Comique, Paris, in 1884 – is the portrayal of the young Manon Lescaut, when she arrives at an Amiens coaching inn during the first scene. If she is miscast – the wrong key – the plot of Abbé Antoine François Prévost’s 18th century morality tale simply does not unlock. The opera fails. In this Laurent Pelly production at New York’s Met the key turns smoothly, the plot flows on entrancingly.
On the face of it, it is a simple enough story. Manon is a country girl, an ingénue, and the opera traces her path from innocence, through true love, compromised love, hedonistic corruption, redemption, hubris and on to tragic destruction.
Abbé Prévost was no romantic simpleton, ahead of his time. His wild gyrations through Europe, across the military, the Jesuits, Benedictines and academia, trailing failed affairs in his wake, gave him material enough for characters like Manon Lescaut. Think autobiography when the young Chevalier de Grieux spots Manon in the courtyard and falls instantly in love.
Prévost weaves a complex pattern with Manon’s apparently simple warp, using the weft of her conflicting character traits – all the principal characters are similarly conflicted – to present a romantic 18th century tale, shortly before 19th century Romanticism was spawned. Massenet was quick to spot the suitability of the plot for translation to the operatic stage.
Puccini, who could suss a winner from a distance and was not too proud to snaffle any competitor’s idea, rapidly followed Massenet in 1893 with Manon Lescaut, cunningly using her name in full to avoid confusion, and possible lawsuits. Puccini’s version is much more bleak.
The conflicted Manon-type character created by Prévost pops up in different forms throughout the 19th century; Hector Berlioz’s 1834 symphony, Harold en Italie based on Byron’s poem of the same name. Massenet’s own Werther – a Goethe gloom-spreader – premiered in 1892 at the Hofoper in Vienna, for example.
Manon proved so successful that Massenet was urged to write a follow up, Werther. I find Werther so gloomy it’s a close-run thing between what will happen first – will Werther drown himself in a stream or will the audience collectively slit their wrists? Fortunately, Werther usually obliges.
Happily, Manon is in a lighter vein. Laurent Pelly, the French opera and theatre director, first brought this production of Manon to the Met stage in 2012. Then, Manon was played by Anna Netrebko, the celebrated Russian soprano. She is currently singing the role of Lady Macbeth in Verdi’s Macbeth, also at the Met. More of that another day.
In this production Lisette Oropesa, a graduate of the Met’s Lindemann Young Artist Development programme, sang Manon. She was the golden key, unlocking the plot. On arrival from the country to meet her cousin, an army officer, Lescaut, she portrayed the excited innocent, out of her depth, perfectly; then transitioned to Chevalier de Grieux’s lover, through demanding Paris courtesan, penitent lover of de Grieux, back to greedy “have it all” who brings herself and de Grieux to destruction, and finally tragic outcast, compellingly. Her acting was sufficiently powerful to be troubling.
I later watched a Met on Demand 2012 performance with Ms. Netrebko as Manon and the contrast was stark. Ms. Netrebko’s voice was faultless – no surprise there – but in the opening scene she was too worldly to be Manon, fresh from the country. Her character key did not unlock the plot.
Ms. Oropesa is a lyric coloratura, who first played Susannah in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro at the Met in 2007 to great acclaim. She has gone on to forge a successful international career and, boy, can she act. She burst onto the stage as a bundle of innocent energy, head darting hither and thither, eyes fluttering, arms tightly crossed as she took in the unfamiliar scene with a sense of wonder.
Naively charming to the oleaginous Guillot de Morfontaine, the ridiculous but sinister old roué who immediately tries to seduce her, offering her his carriage for the ride to Paris, she next minute falls in love with de Grieux. Meanwhile, her cousin, Lescaut leaves her to go gambling, freeing her and de Grieux to commandeer Greasy Guillot’s coach and head to a love nest in Paris. Whew! The plot whips along.
In the love nest, a cosy garret, Manon has transitioned from innocent abroad to scheming lover. Already, a questionable bouquet has arrived from an admirer, causing jealousy to rear its ugly head.
When de Grieux announces they are about to celebrate her 16th birthday there was an audible intake of breath from the audience. Keep calm folks. In France the age of consent was raised from 11 to 13 in 1863 – so, it’s all quite proper. But, of course, it really isn’t, whatever the Code Civil dictated then. Incidentally, it’s now 15.
After de Grieux is spirited away by his unhappy family, Manon falls enthusiastically into the life of a Parisian courtesan. When she appears in the midst of the Cours-la-Reine, a royal festival, she is imperious, demanding trinkets and has every old fart in Paris trying to impress her. The transition from innocence to worldliness is complete – and shocking.
We now travel to the land of the unlikely. De Grieux has decided to vanquish his sorrow by joining the church – Abbé Prévost autobiographical reference coming on – and we find him plagued by a young, female congregation, who find the comely Abbé’s sermons “fascinating”. Oh, yeah?
His father tries to entice him back to the family. Having failed, de Grieux senior, played by Kwangchui Youn, a Korean baritone based in Berlin, says – ironically – that they will all honour him as a saint; knowing that his son’s rush to celibacy is bound to fail.
Which, of course, it does as Manon, having heard de Grieux is to take to the cloth, pitches up in St. Sulpice and they resume their affair with surplice ripping vigour on a beat-up bed, curiously located behind a pillar in the chancel.
Michael Fabiano, an American tenor, premiered at the Met in 2010 in the role of Raffaele in Verdi’s Stiffelio. He excelled as de Grieux, displaying an effortless, lyrical tone and conveying conflicting emotions – especially convincing when surplice ripping – while his character is alternately tortured by love, jealousy, remorse and, ultimately sympathy at the tragic end.
The surplice ripping does the trick and we move from sequestered St. Sulpice to gambling den, as Manon draws de Grieux – he has abandoned surplice, dog collar, the whole shebang – into her net of vice. Greasy Guillot, jealous, tricks de Grieux into a gambling duel – a sort of Trumpian “my hands are bigger than your hands” thing – which de Grieux wins.
Guillot de Morfontaine is played by Carlo Bosi, an Italian tenor, best known and sought after for his comprimario (supporting) roles. That’s not to belittle him. Comprimario roles, if they are muffed, can ruin a plot.
In Manon the transformation of Guillot from amusing, hopeless womaniser at the inn in Scene I, to vindictive denunciator, accusing de Grieux of cheating in the card game is as sudden as changing weather. He then ruthlessly has Manon, as de Grieux’s accomplice, arrested for moral corruption. This happens in a flash and Signor Bosi pulled it off menacingly and cane-wagglingly well. In Row J in the stalls I shuddered, waiting for the hand of plod on my shoulder.
Maestro Maurizio Benini, an Italian conductor, presided over the pit. He began his career at the Met in 1998 and has clocked up over 200 performances. Maestro Benini was completely at home with Massenet’s flowing score, setting an urgent pace to drive the onstage action forward. The Met orchestra was the Met orchestra in top form.
Laurent Pelly’s setting in this production is elegant and uncluttered. He uses different levels of scenery to add a sense of constant motion to the action. The opening scene courtyard is flanked by a rampart and a descending staircase. The garret is perched above the streets of a misty Paris and reassuringly shambolic. Cours-la-Reine is set with a backdrop of lamp-lit ramps and walks, transecting the performing space. The Chorus of promenaders traverses back and forth. Manon can achieve a grand entrance.
The pillars of the church of St. Sulpice are set off the vertical, a clever, deliberately disturbing device signalling that de Grieux’s adoption of the cloth is far from stable; as are the buildings in the final scene on the docks when the released Manon is folded in de Grieux’s arms and dies. She dies almost without explanation. The plot has run its course. So has she. No tubercular arias required.
The intention is to instil uncertainty in an unfolding plot that might risk falling off a cliff into pure farce without persistent visual semaphore that this may not end well. M. Pelly understands that although Manon may have premiered at Opéra-Comique and been written with moments of light relief we are dealing with timeless human dilemmas. This is no operetta.
That said, M. Pelly doesn’t try to transform Manon into a morality play for today. Good for him. It is a temptation more directors would do well to resist. Abbé Prévost left us an engaging, timeless story of human frailty that resonates down the centuries. That is enough.