Manon Lescaut (Opera Journeys Mini Guide Series)

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Manon French opera in five acts Music by Jules Massenet Libretto: Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille, based on the novel L’Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, by Antoine-François Prévost (1731) Premiere at the Théâtre de l’OpéraComique in Paris, January 1884

Adapted from the Opera Journeys Lecture Series by Burton D. Fisher Story Synopsis Principal Characters in the Opera Story Narrative with Music Highlights Massenet and Manon

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Opera Journeys ™ Mini Guide Series

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Story Synopsis Manon arrives at an inn to meet her cousin, Lescaut, who is charged with escorting her to a convent school. There, she encounters the Chevalier des Grieux with whom she falls in love: the newfound lovers flee to Paris and live together. Des Grieux’s father, Comte des Grieux, disapproves of his son’s sinful liaison with Manon and arranges to have his son abducted. Manon allows herself to be tempted to a life of luxury with the wealthy official, de Brétigny, and abandons des Grieux. After she learns that des Grieux has entered a seminary, she rushes to him, and the lovers reunite. At the gambling tables, Des Grieux and Manon are accused of cheating; however, through the intercession of his father, he is exonerated, but Manon is arrested and condemned to deportation to the French colony of Louisiana. On the road to the port of Le Havre, Manon’s strength fails her, and she dies in des Grieux’s arms.

Principal Characters in the Opera Manon, a young girl of fifteen Lescaut, Manon’s cousin Chevalier des Grieux Comte des Grieux, his father De Brétigny, a wealthy official Guillot de Morfontaine, a nobleman

Soprano Baritone Tenor Bass Baritone Bass

Citizens of Amiens, travellers, gamblers, Parisians, worshippers, soldiers

TIME and PLACE: Early 18th century, Amiens, Paris, and the road to Le Havre

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Story Narrative with Music Highlights ACT I: The courtyard of the inn at Amiens A crowd awaits the arrival of the coach from Arras. Among them is Lescaut, a member of the Royal Guard and soldier of fortune who has come to meet his young cousin, Manon, in order to escort her to a convent. After her arrival, the young 15-year old Manon innocently relates the excitement of her first trip away from home. Manon: Je suis encor tout étourdie

While Lescaut arranges for rooms at the inn, Guillot de Morfontaine, an old roué and government official, becomes charmed by the beautiful young Manon and offers her money for her love: Manon reacts with amusement to his flattery, but her cousin, Lescaut, overhearing their conversation, reproaches her indiscretion: it is a threat to their family’s honor. Three girls of doubtful character appear in the courtyard, their fine apparel and jewelry noticed enviously by Manon. Manon becomes tearful as she contemplates her approaching convent life, and tries to reconcile her fate and the hopelessness of her dreams, desires, and fantasies for pleasures Voyons, Manon, plus de chimères

The handsome young Chevalier des Grieux enters the courtyard and awaits the coach that will take him to visit his father.

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Des Grieux’s entrance:

Des Grieux notices Manon, and becomes captivated and infatuated with her beauty. Manon explains that it was because of her obsession for pleasure that her family is sending her to a convent school. As Manon and des Grieux become more acquainted, they fall in love. Love theme:

Now intoxicated by his new found love, des Grieux convinces Manon not to go the convent. She is receptive, and both impulsively decide to escape to Paris. When Lescaut is heard approaching, the lovers leap into a carriage and disappear. Nous vivrons à Paris…

Lescaut returns, angry because he has lost all of his money gambling at the Inn. When he learns that his cousin Manon has fled with a stranger, he explodes in a rage.

ACT II: The apartment of des Grieux and Manon in Paris Manon and des Grieux now live happily together in poverty and squalor in an apartment in Paris. Des Grieux writes to his father asking his permission to marry Manon, and trembles in fear that his father may react in anger. As the lovers embrace tenderly, des Grieux expresses his hope for his father’s consent, but Manon wonders whether they could not just live together as lovers.

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Lescaut arrives, accompanied by the wealthy nobleman, de Brétigny, in the disguise of a soldier. De Brétigny whispers to Manon that des Grieux’s father has ordered him to abduct his son from his sinful life with her. He then tries to persuade Manon to leave des Grieux and flee with him to a life of luxury. After Des Grieux leaves to post his letter to his father, Manon becomes hesitant and struggles with her inner conflicts: de Brétigny’s offer of the luxuries of the material world have become irresistible. Manon decides to abandon des Grieux and bids a sentimental farewell to her simple domestic life. Adieu notre petite table

Des Grieux returns to find Manon in tears. He tries to comfort her by telling her of his dream, describing the rustic retreat he plans to share with her after they are married. En fermant les yeux…

A knock on the door interrupts des Grieux’s vision of their future. Manon tries to prevent him from opening the door, fully aware that it is de Brétigny and his men coming to abduct him. Manon is unable to deter des Grieux: he is captured by de Brétigny and taken away. Now alone, Manon despairs, but suddenly de Brétigny arrives with jewels, and Manon is overwhelmed with her new-found luxuries: she quickly forgets about her povero chevalier des Grieux, “her poor cavalier, des Grieux.”

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ACT III - Scene 1: Cours-la-Reine, a square in Paris A ravishing Manon appears among the crowd, now the reigning queen of Paris, and relishing her new life of material splendor, as well as the attention she receives as the mistress of the wealthy de Brétigny. Manon sings a tribute to youth and love. Profitons bien de la jeunesse

Comte des Grieux, de Grieux’s father, appears. He announces that he has come to Paris because his son has entered the priesthood at St. Suplice. He then thanks de Brétigny for helping him to separate his son from his scandalous love affair with Manon. Manon overhears their conversation, approaches the elder des Grieux, and inquires whether his son has erased the bitter memory of his betrayed love from his heart: des Grieux answers affirmatively. Manon, still deeply in love with des Grieux, is dismayed to hear that des Grieux has totally forgotten her: she immediately departs for St. Suplice to meet with him.

Scene 2 - The Church of St. Suplice Crowds of the faithful praise their modest new priest, des Grieux, as he leaves the church after preaching his first sermon. Des Grieux’s father arrives to reproach his son and persuade him to abandon the priesthood: he invokes his duty, and urges him to return home and marry a respectable woman who would be worthy of him and his family. Des Grieux decisively rejects his father’s pleas and sarcastically advises him to pray.

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Alone, des Grieux prays that his faith will provide peace for his tormented soul, and extinguish the haunting memories of his love for Manon: he is torn in conflict between the sacred versus the profane, his love for his church, and his inability to extinguish his love for Manon. Ah! Fuyez, douce image….

Manon arrives at the Church and prays to be reunited with des Grieux. When des Grieux appears, he at first tries to resist the temptation she so eloquently offers him, but his uncontrollable passion for Manon overcomes him. Manon atones for her betrayal of him, admits her guilt, and begs for his forgiveness. N’estce plus ma main….

Emotions and temptation have overpowered des Grieux’s capability to reason. He surrenders again to Manon, and the two lovers reunite and proclaim their love as they leave the church together.

ACT IV: The gambling salon of the Hôtel de Transylvanie Manon reminds des Grieux that his inheritance is eroding and he must gamble for more money to maintain their lifestyle. After des Grieux accepts Guillot’s invitation to join their card game, Manon prays that des Grieux will win: his triumph will assure them that they can maintain their glittering life, its excitement, and its pleasures.

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As cousin Lescaut and Manon look on, des Grieux wins considerable sums, but Guillot suspects treachery and accuses him, as well as the onlooking Manon, of cheating. Guillot leaves to fetch the police. Manon urges des Grieux to flee to safety, but it is too late: Guillot and the police arrive and accuse des Grieux and Manon of thievery. The Comte des Grieux arrives to save his son from disgrace and scandal. However, Manon is ordered to prison, but des Grieux, thanks to his father, is exonerated.

ACT V: On the road to Le Havre Manon, condemned as a criminal, has been sentenced to deportation to the French colony of Louisiana. Lescaut and des Grieux have been unsuccessful in rescuing her, but Lescaut has bribed a sergeant so that des Grieux can join Manon. Manon, ill and exhausted, becomes delirious and can think only of repentance for the shame she has brought upon des Grieux. While in his arms, she reminisces about the happy days of their love. Manon becomes weaker and weaker, and as she dies, she utters her final pathetic words: Et c’est l’histoire de Manon Lescaut, “And this is the story of Manon Lescaut.”

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Massenet………………………………and Manon

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ules Massenet (1842 to 1912) was the dominating figure of the French lyric theater during the late nineteenth century: he was the most successful opera composer in France, if not in Europe, in that quartercentury between the death of Bizet in 1875, and the première of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902. Massenet, at the age of six, was given piano lessons by his mother, and by his eleventh year, his exceptional talents gained him admission to the Paris Conservatoire where in 1859, at the age of seventeen, he won the premier prix after a successful recital. He pursued music studies in harmony and composition at the Paris Conservatoire under the sympathetic guidance of its director, Ambroise Thomas, the renowned composer of Mignon (1866). In 1863, at the age of 21 after winning the Grand Prix de Rome, with the enthusiastic support and confidence of both Berlioz and Liszt, he acquiesced to his compulsive ambitions, and embarked on a career as an opera composer. Massenet composed 28, and among his better known works, which are continually performed in the standard repertory of major opera houses, are: Manon (1884), Le Cid (1885), Esclarmonde (1889), Werther (1892), Thaïs (1894), and Don Quichotte (1910).

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any of the details of Massenet’s life emanate from his autobiography, Mes souvenirs, dictated to a journalist just before his death in 1912. Like Richard Wagner’s autobiography, Mein Leben, Massenet’s autobiography is self-serving and therefore arouses skepticism: it has the aura of a retrospective documentation of his career, which, in many instances, separates fact from fiction. Much of its content is an efficient and conscious attempt to create positive images for posterity: he praises himself as a meticulous perfectionist, reinvents facts and events, settle old scores, and in the end, establishes himself as a self-proclaimed colossus.

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In Mes souvenirs, in an attack on the long list of his many adversaries, Massenet tends to posture and present himself as a person who above all else was seeking to please rather than to provoke. At the same time, as he defends his reputation as a romantic adventurer, he praises and elevates his self image as a successful womanizer: it is of psychological interest that many of the themes of his operas concern unfulfilled amorous obsessions; his operatic lovers Charlotte and Werther, Herod and Salome, Thaïs and Athanaël, can all be associated with his inner turmoil in seeking love’s fulfillment. Art expresses truth and beauty. Most of Massenet’s operas were composed during the fin de siecle, the end of the nineteenth century whose zeitgeist assaulted the old order and perceptions of society came into question. Philosophically, the era became spiritually unsettled: man became selfquestioning as he became conscious of the era’s cultural and spiritual decadence. Nietszche, the quintessential cultural pessimist of the nineteenth-century, identified those times as “the transvaluation of values,” in effect, his recognition that society had lost its moral and ethical foundations, all emanating from the dramatic ideological and scientific transformations of the period: Marx, Darwin, and Freud. Anxieties evolved from society’s utopian frustrations: the failure of the French Revolution’s promise of democracy, progress and change, colonialism, as well as the ideological perplexities created by the realization of the Industrial Revolution; socialism, and materialism. Nietzsche viewed his society in terms of the death of virtue and morality, metaphorically proclaiming the death of God, and desperately urging a renewal and rebirth of spiritual human values. The themes in Massenet’s operas dutifully reflect the anxieties and preoccupations of his late nineteenth century bourgeois audiences: his opera themes tend to tease and provoke to consciousness the era’s conflicting moral values. In Werther, the story portrays the agonies of Werther and Charlotte as they decline to challenge bourgeois restrictions and conventions: in Don Quichotte, the hero upholds traditions in a changing world; and of course, in Manon, the tragedy of the story concerns flawed

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human character that becomes contaminated by materialism. As such, Massenet’s operatic themes served to hold a mirror up to his audience: in a moralistic sense, he was attempting to help them peer into their inner souls.

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he story of Manon owes its provenance to the Abbé Prévost (1697-1763), a former priest who, because of his picaresque life-style, had been excommunicated from the Benedictine order for blasphemy; ergo, the title Abbé. As a renegade priest, he spent most of his life in exile. In 1731, he wrote his singular masterpiece, his novel entitled L’Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, “The History of the Cavalier des Grieux and Manon Lescaut.” The novel is entirely autobiographical as it recounts the experiences of the Abbè’s turbulent youth in a series of episodes that all take place in the notoriously corrupt Paris of the Regency of Louis XIV around the year 1715. The main theme of the novel deals with the classic conflict between reason and passion, and virtue and vice: his story concerns the fatal fascination of a young nobleman for a seductive but perfidious woman; it is a tragedy about human character flaws, however, all presented with the customary dignity and moral purpose inherent and typical of French classical drama. The novel reads almost like a play: its action is swift, it has few superfluities, and it is direct and simple. It maintained a strong popular appeal for upwards of two centuries and became the underlying literary source for many operas: Auber’s Manon Lescaut with Scribe as the librettist (1856), Henze’s Boulevard Solitude, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, and Kleinmichel’s Das Schloss de l’Orme.

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révost’s novel is a narration within a narration. In a very similar structure to that of Mérimée’s Carmen, the storyteller meets des Grieux who recounts the story of Manon. Des Grieux is initially a

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fine, upright young man, who is gradually destroyed by his obsession for the seductive and tantalizingly beautiful, but thoroughly unscrupulous, Manon Lescaut. Des Grieux is caught in a struggle between his better self and his instincts: his inability to act with reason leads to his psychological degeneration. But in the moralistic sense, the downfall of both lovers is the logical outcome of their flawed characters. If Prévost evokes a deep sympathy for des Grieux - the author himself - it is because his weakness is that of universal human nature. In this sense, man is capable of acting stupidly when he is in love: des Grieux’s tragic flaw is that he acts senselessly in his pursuit of Manon; like Carmen’s power over Josè, Manon becomes des Grieux’s femme fatale. Bizet’s Carmen (1875) premiered nine years before Massenet’s Manon. Carmen shocked and offended its opéra-comique family audience who became outraged by the blatant vulgarity and immorality presented in its sexually driven melodrama. Nevertheless, Carmen was viewed by the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche during his anti- Wagner period as bringing to opera a Mediterranean clarity that dispelled “all the fog of the Wagnerian ideal.” Nietszche was referring to the alluring character of Carmen, a character who added a new thrust of realism: the French verismè. To Nietszche, Carmen portrayed the dark side of Nature in which human love is transformed into an evil and cruel fatal destiny. Carmen and Manon, two powerful sisters of the “French connection” in opera, share a passionate determination, and at times unmerciful, if not brutal exercise of their destructive erotic power over men. The tragedy in the Manon story – for both Manon and des Grieux - involves their surrender and capitulation to instinct. The Enlightenment ennobled reason as the path to universal truth: Romanticism followed and rejected the Enlightenment, advocating freedom and feeling; but the late nineteenth century, reeling from the discoveries of Darwin and Freud, judged man a creature of pure instinct. This story, although written a century earlier, is directed to a nineteenth century audience: its universal moralistic theme admonished and cautioned human excess as

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well as the fatal results when reason is overpowered by passions, desires, and emotions. But after des Griuex meets the seductive and perfidious Manon Lescaut, he is overcome by an obsessive fascination and fatal attraction to her: the entire subsequent story is driven by his classic inability to control his emotions and passions. As a result, des Grieux progresses – like Don Jose in Carmen - through a deep psychological degeneration, and continuously struggles between the tension and conflict between his instincts and reason. Des Grieux is unable to shake or remove his compelling obsession for Manon, and his weakness causes him to relinquish a seemingly promising ecclesiastical career. In the Abbè’s story, the young des Grieux came from a good family, became enrolled in the order of the Knights of Malta, and had taken his vows of celibacy at the age of seventeen: initially, he was portrayed as naïve and ostensibly gave little thought to the difference between the sexes. Ultimately, his life degenerates into corruption: he becomes a cheat and a scoundrel, a professional card-shark, steals, becomes a gigolo, and lives on the money and jewelry Manon extracts from her various lovers. In the original novel, he sinks even more deeply into moral corruption and crowns his new-found criminal career by murdering a prison guard while escaping from jail. The pathos generated from des Grieux’s character - this creature of instinct rather than reason - springs from the fact that while he recognizes Manon for what she is, he remains enslaved to her to the last moment of her pitiful end: she became his fatal destiny.

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he Abbé’s novel became sacred scripture for nineteenth century courtesans: the fictional Manon Lescaut had become somewhat of a “role model” for the Parisian demimonde. Verdi’s La Traviata is based on Alexandre Dumas fils autobiographical story of one of the most famous courtesans of nineteenth century Paris, Marie Duplessus. In Act III of Verdi’s opera, Alfredo returns to discover a letter from Violetta informing him that

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she is returning to her former life as a courtesan. If Verdi’s stage directions are followed properly, next to Violetta’s farewell letter, an open book rests on the table: the book is the Abbé Prévost’s L’Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut, and the page of the Abbé’s novel that is open, summarizes the essence of the entire Manon Lescaut story; a story about a beautiful, amoral young courtesan, who is genuinely in love with a man who is unable to give her the luxury she cannot do without: “….but can you not see, poor dear soul, that in the condition to which we are reduced, fidelity would be a foolish virtue? Do you think it possible to be loving on an empty stomach? Hunger would cause me some fatal mishap, and one day I would utter my last breath thinking it was a sigh of love….” The libretto for Massenet’s Manon was written by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille. Meilhac (1831-1897) was a well-known French playwright and librettist who, in partnership with Ludovic Halévy, wrote numerous opéra comique librettos for Offenbach’s opera bouffes. Nevertheless, his most famous collaboration was the adaptation of Mérimée’s Carmen for Bizet. Philippe Gille (1831-1901), was initially an art critic for Le Figaro, but later became a prolific librettist contributing texts for Halévy, Offenbach, Delibes, and, of course, Massenet. In their scenario for Manon, the librettists succumbed to the French predilection for broad operatic indulgence: there are two bustling crowd scenes, a hedonistic atmosphere in the Transylvanie gambling scene and the contrasting dramatic entrance of the Count, and an intensely powerful scene at the church of St. Suplice that presents that potent eternal conflict between the spirit and the flesh. In general, Massenet and his librettists softened Prévost’s cautionary tale in order to conform to the comfortable bourgeois tastes of the OpéraComique audience: as a result, their operatic version of the story tends to be more subtle and refined, and avoids social criticism so as not to affront or provoke outrage. As a result, in the opera, Manon’s promiscuity is minimized, and she does not die

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ignominiously in exile in the New World, nor does des Grieux turn thief and murderer. Similarly, Massenet’s Lescaut, in the novel, Manon’s brother and pimp, is transformed into Manon’s swashbuckling cousin, and the sinister Guillot of the novel is transformed into a humorous, almost buffo figure. With all this rearrangement, Massenet’s opera becomes essentially the story of two innocents whose excessive love conflicts with uncontrollable fate, and thus causes them to spiral downward. In effect, the aura of moral corruption in Prévost’s story is compromised as Massenet and his librettists acceded to their audience’s sensibilities, cultivation, and refinement, and avoided social criticism.

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oth Puccini and Massenet attacked the powerful message in the Abbé Prévost’s novel. Massenet wrote his Manon nine years before Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (1893). The Puccini and Massenet operas are war horses in the standard opera repertory, and both tell an almost identical story, yet both are different in style. French opera, just like Italian opera, derives from similar Latin roots and origins: both are mired in basic emotions and passions, and both usually deal with those same great primal conflicts of the spirit and the flesh; love, lust, greed, betrayal, jealousy, hate, revenge, and murder. Italian opera can be more direct, and certainly more declamatory: it tends to be much more naked in its passions, and most of the time, intensely scorching as it absorbs us into its conflicts and tensions. But French opera is generally more oblique, more subtle, and even at times, overly refined and sophisticated. Nevertheless, notwithstanding style and traditions, both deliver the same dramatic intensity. Massenet, a composer who focused on bringing human passions to center stage in opera, has often been called the “French Puccini”: both contemporary composers were champions of the Romantic tradition. Massenet’s music contains a deep poetic feeling, together with graceful, tender, charming, and flowery melodies, at times, described as a “discreet and semi-religious eroticism.” Like

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Puccini, his technical mastery and his craftsmanship are undeniable, particularly in musical characterization. And also like Puccini, he was also a complete man of the theater, meticulously attending to every detail in the staging of his works: scenery, costumes, and lighting, as well as the orchestral elements. When Puccini was confronted with the fact that Massenet had already written an opera based on the story, he commented: “Why shouldn’t there be two operas about Manon? After all, a woman like Manon could certainly have more than one lover.” Musically, the operas are very different. Puccini was a young, hot-blooded Italian, who created an opera with full-throated, extroverted passions. So, in the end, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, unlike the sophisticated and refined French version of the story by Massenet, is far from abstract emotion. Puccini’s opera rages with lustful Italian ardor, with powerful emotion and passion, and he makes no attempt to present anything other than an Italian opera. Puccini said himself: “Massenet feels the story as a Frenchman, with the powder and the minuets. I shall feel it as an Italian, with desperate passion.” In Puccini’s opera, des Grieux is an impulsive youth, unrestrained, and even hysterical in the expression of his passions. But in Massenet’s opera, it is Manon herself who dominates the drama. Nevertheless, particular in its musical character portraits, Massenet’s Manon remains true to its French traditions: in its character and style it is much more subtle and delicate in its confrontations, and its preoccupations with sexuality are reserved and presented with an almost child-like innocence. Massenet pleases but does not overwhelm: he left that to Puccini.

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s one views the late nineteenth-century French lyric theater, Massenet radiates as its master. His Manon is both one of the most popular French operas, and one of its most characteristic: it has certainly become Massenet’s best loved and most successful work.

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The score contains a lush lyricism that is combined with grace and refinement: only a Frenchman could have written its delicate lyrical phrases, and threading through Massenet’s score are delightful dances in antique style which help to evoke and capture the atmosphere of eighteenth century France. Nevertheless, Massenet never sacrifices the story’s inherent dramatic elements: if there is an excessive sentimentality in his music, it is certainly overcome by his fine sense of theater and his elegant orchestration. Massenet was following in Charles Gounod’s footsteps, his music combining a delicate lyricism with bold, arching melodic expositions. The climactic scenes, while never aspiring to the grandeur and bigness of those in Italian grand opera, do not fail to deliver their intended powerful effect. Manon was written as an opéra comique for the Opéra-Comique theater The term opéra comique, literally, comic opera, can be misleading. In one of its definitions, it refers to music drama containing spoken dialogue: its opposite, grand opera contains no spoken parts. In Manon, replacing spoken dialogue, Massenet uses the mélodrame technique, literally, song (Greek melos) combined with drama (Latin drama). In mélodrame, the text is spoken to an orchestral accompaniment: it conveys an extraordinary effect because words can become emphasized and stressed through their musical accompaniment. Massenet perfected the melodrame technique and often has characters in conversation speaking over an orchestral accompaniment: an effect of naturalism is achieved because the combined spoken and accompanied conversations imitates the natural inflections of the French language. Ultimately, Massenet’s goal was to provide virtually continuous music: when characters stop singing and begin to speak intimately, their conversation is underscored with familiar melodies; a solo violin underscores the spoken words of Manon and des Grieux in their first meeting in Act I. In melodrame, the characters continue to alternate from speech to song, and the song is kept relatively close to the speech: in that first meeting of Manon and des Grieux, the underlying musical phrases accompanying them develop into the

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lover’s main musical motive. In the scene between the Count and his son at St. Suplice, their alternation from dialogue to music is another quintessential example of Massenet’s mélodrame technique. Another specific Massenet operatic signature is his technique now termed the phrase Massenétique: it is a foreshortening of the accompanying melody which creates a sense of imbalance; the musical line becomes irregular, hesitant, tentative, but close to conversation. In Manon’s scene at St.Suplice, N’estce plus ma main, Massenet crafts his melody so that their meeting is virtually conversational. A sense of realism is created as the underlying melody expands and contracts as feelings and emotions would naturally pulsate during conversation.

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anon is a fascinating illustration of feminine power, as well as frailty. In certain respects, she is like her coarser Spanish cousin, Carmen, a beautiful woman whose seductiveness exerts a terrifying power over men. Nevertheless, Manon, by her actions, is an archetypal example of the wicked conquering the weak. Massenet perfectly captures those evil and contradictory characteristics of his heroine: a portrait of a female character that ranks with Mélisande, Lulu, and Salome. Maupassant commented that Manon is a woman of “instinctive perfidy………sincere in her deception and frank in her infamy,” certainly the classic and archetypal view of seductive womanhood. Nevertheless, it was the Abbé Prévost, a man trained in the morality of religion, who portrayed the heroine imbued with sin, and eventually, craving forgiveness, and redemption: Manon succeeds in her hedonistic ambitions, but then after absolution for her transgressions, she dies; however, not before the final scene in which she repents for her sins and swears eternal constancy to her faithful lover. Manon herself is a woman in conflict: she cannot reconcile her desires with fulfillment: Manon cannot control her two obsessions, that eternal paradox of her inner conflict and tension between the material world and her yearnings for true love. As a

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result, Manon, just like her lover des Grieux, becomes a victim and sinks into evil and immorality. Not only is she immoral, she is amoral, and as such, all of her actions which contribute to her subsequent decline, are the actions of an uncontrollable creature of mere instinct.

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assenet’s musical genius was his ability to convey subtlety and delicacy. In the second act, Manon is very much aware that very soon des Grieux will be abducted. She is conscious that she is about to enter a courtesan’s career, and she hesitates and virtually trembles. Her farewell to her life with des Grieux on the Rue Vivienne is addressed not to des Grieux but to their little inanimate dinner table: Adieu notre petite table, a short and simple aria of just 24 measures in which the vocal line is supported by a simple progression of eloquent chords; metaphorically, her farewell to the table is in reality her farewell to her own innocence. Manon is a multi-dimensional personality, so Massenet provided her with a variety of musical motifs in each of her six scenes: she is a naïve and somewhat childish adolescent in her first entrance; she is playful in her squalid love nest with des Grieux on the Rue Vivienne scene; she is a classic hedon appearing as a full-bloomed courtesan on the Coursla-Reine; she is a selfless seductress at St.Suplice; she is a sorceress inciting a fatal destiny at the Transylvanie gaming scene; and finally, she becomes a pathetic prisoner of her own fatal destiny on the road to Le Havre. Massenet’s leitmotifs, reveal what the characters are thinking and feeling. In Act II, aware of des Grieux’s impending abduction, Manon tries to stop des Grieux from opening the door, but the orchestral motive narrates the truth: it is playing de Brétigny’s motive, and Manon is only thinking of the promises of her glamorous future. Manon provides a host of contrasting show pieces that represent a formidable yet rewarding challenge to a singing actress: her success is a passport to the operatic “Hall of Fame.” As such, Manon’s many musical transformations drive her from the shy and hesitant young girl, singing Je suis encore tout

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étourdie, to the regretful Voyons Manon, to the skittishness and charm of the letter scene, to the pure sentiment of the farewell to the petite table, to the glittering confidence of the Gavotte, to the irresistibly seductive n’esce plus ma main, and in the finale, to her mournful repentance. The Abbé Prévost’s novel is a cautionary moral story: the wages of sin can only lead to death. But evil characters are complex, and they command our interest and fascination: they provide a vicarious moment for us to witness his own flaws and failures, and see deeply into our own souls. In this opera story, Paris and its lures destroy Manon and des Grieux, yet the opera world keeps them alive. On international opera stages, Manon is considered one of the greatest masterpieces of the lyric theater. True, there are many other operas celebrating the story of Manon; some are perhaps more profound, some are perhaps more ardent, and some are perhaps more introspective, but none is more delicate, refined, and even as subtle as Massenet’s masterpiece.

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Manon

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