Ah yes, on Saturday morning at The MET Live in HD, another glamorous, sexually active woman will spiral downward.
Starting at 10:55 a.m. in the Vallecito Room at Fort Lewis College, the transmission of a Metropolitan Opera matinee will take you into the descent of Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” from Amiens, to Paris, and finally to dismal exile in – where else – America. It will take only three and a half hours, but you get some of the most beautiful romantic music the Italian composer ever wrote.
In 1893, Puccini dipped into a sensational 18th century novel for his third opera. Written by Abbé Prévost, an on-again-off-again Benedictine monk, the short novel ostensibly centered on the downfall of a French chevalier. Des Grieux was a young, gullible aristocrat who succumbed to the charms of a shall-we-say more experienced teenager.
As Germaine Greer wrote in her introduction to a new English translation: “Des Grieux’s falling in love at such a young age with a giddy creature like Manon is the kind of unmitigated disaster that the families of the gentry most dreaded.”
Prévost’s short novel was his seventh in a series. Published in 1731, it was quickly suppressed and banned as indecent. The author added moralizing details, and two decades later, “L’Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut” was republished to great popular success.
Prévost employed a framing device to tell the chevalier’s tale. The narrator, a traveler, sees a dozen women prisoners chained together in a harbor setting. He also sees a despondent young aristocrat. The narrator introduces himself and invites the sobbing young man to a café to hear his story.
Des Grieux’s tale of love and obsession follows, told in flashbacks.
Puccini and his librettists unspooled the tragedy differently – from its love-at-first-sight beginning in Amiens. Act II takes place in Paris where Manon (soprano Kristine Opolais) has fled, first with des Grieux (tenor Robert Alagna). But now she beds with a real aristocrat, her very own sugar-daddy – Geronte (bass Brindley Sherratt).
Des Grieux suddenly appears and convinces Manon to run away with him – again. She agrees but insists on scarfing up all her jewelry. The delay results in her arrest. Which brings up one of several plot problems. Manon’s trial and imprisonment are glossed over in a musical intermezzo. The abrupt Act III harbor scene requires you to automatically know what has happened.
Act IV finds Manon and des Grieux outside New Orleans in a desert. Never mind that Puccini and Prévost didn’t know American geography. Dying of thirst in a Louisiana desert is a fitting end for two love-sick naïf’s.
Were it not for Puccini’s seductive music, this opera would have a difficult time surviving contemporary skepticism. You simply have to buy into the romantic view of love. It’s most challenging when des Grieux bribes his way onto the ship. He wants to share slave-labor exile with his beloved.
The Met’s new production time travels to France during World War II, which doesn’t make a lot of sense as there is no political axe to grind in the original story. Still, the Met hired British director Richard Eyre to re-imagine “Manon.” It promises to look like occupied France.
jreynolds@durangoherald.com. Judith Reynolds is a Durango writer, art historian and arts journalist.
if you go
The MET: Live in HD presents Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut” at 10:55 a.m. Saturday in the Vallecito Room of the Fort Lewis College Student Union. Based on a novel by Abbé Prévost, featuring soprano Kristine Opolais, tenor Robert Alagna and bass Brindley Sherratt in a new production directed by Richard Eyre, conducted by Fabio Luisi. Tickets: $23 general, $21 seniors, students and MET members, available online at www.durangoconcerts.com, by phone at 247-7657 or at the Welcome Center at Eighth Street and Main Avenue, or at the door. Running time: 3 hours, 35 minutes. Sung in Italian with English subtitles.
