Manon Lescaut - Week 1

She dies in his arms—while singing, of course!
Talk about drama and anguish! The student Des Grieux sees a beautiful young country maiden (Manon) on her way to a convent against her will (sent there by her father). In the matter of minutes Des Grieux and Manon see one another, sing, and fall deeply in love. Deeply! Before they can do anything about it, an old man also sees her stunning beauty—and plans to abduct her. The studenttricks the old man and the young lovers run off to Paris before the abduction can occur.

Manon likes Paris and soon finds that her young boyfriend can’t give her all the clothes and jewels she wants, so she leaves him for the old man and his money. Then she tires of him and returns to the young dude, only to be tricked by the old man and tossed in prison. Her punishment: banished to Louisiana (in the USA). The lover joins her on the boat and in Louisiana they take a wrong turn and cross a desert. The boyfriend goes to look for water. Manon’s body is wasted from too much fancy Paris life, time in prison, and overexposure to the sun. She falls to the ground, exhausted and dying—but just in time for her boyfriend to return and hold her while she sings her last notes—and, of course, dies in his arms.

Talk about drama and anguish! Only in opera do people fall madly in love in the matter of minutes and live a lifetime in four acts. This opera has a powerful story, splendid music, and

beautiful lovers. It’s an opera you don’t want to miss!

Our opera next monthThe Opera Company of Philadelphia will present Manon Lescaut by Italian composer

Giacomo Puccini from April 20-29. It’s an opera in four acts, written in 1893. An unusual feature of this opera is that Puccini hired five men to write the libretto (words)--and he fired four of them. So confused was the authorship of the libretto that no one was credited on the title page of the original score.

Puccini's publisher was against any project based on this story, because Jules Massenet had already made it into a successful opera in 1884. Despite all the warnings, Puccini proceeded: "Manon is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail to win the hearts of the public. Why shouldn’t there be two operas about Manon? A woman like Manon can have more than one lover." He added, "Massenet feels it as a Frenchman....I shall feel it as an Italian, with a desperate passion." Manon Lescaut was Puccini's third opera and his first great success.

The original story
Manon Lescaut (L'Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut) is a short novel published in 1731 by French author Abbé Prévost. It was controversial in its time and was banned in France. Despite this, it became very popular and illegal editions were widely distributed. In a later edition, the author toned down some scandalous details and injected more moralizing.

Based on this original story, four composers wrote operas, two complete ballets have been choreographed, and five movies produced. Manon (1884), an opera by French composer Massenet is often produced today.

VIDEO CLIPS OF THE WEEK

This week we'll see performances of two of Des Grieux's arias in Act I of Manon Lescaut. In the aria "Tra voi belle, brune e bionde" (Among you beautiful, brunettes and blondes). We're in a square near the Paris gate, Amiens, France in the 18th century. The young nobleman Renato (or Renee in French) Des Grieux is cynical about love and says he knows nothing about it

, so he sings to a group of girls mockingly, asking if any of them can capture his love.

Here's a performance by the legendary Placido Domingo of this aria.

Des Grieux's other famous aria from Act I is "Donna non vidi mai" (I've never seen a woman like that). He's just met Manon and fallen instantly in love with her. Here's Argentinian tenor

Jose Cura to sing the aria.

In our production, the role of Des Grieux will be sung by the Italian-Brazilian tenor Thiago Arancam. If you came to see the Opera Company of Philadelphia's production of Tosca last season, you saw him in the role of the painter/freedom fighter, Mario Cavaradossi. Here's a video clip of Thiago singing Cavaradossi's final aria before being sent to be executed before a firing squad, E lucevan le stelle. He sings about how much he loves life and how he does not want to die.

WEB SITES OF THE WEEK

Visit the Puccini website at http://www.puccini.com/
The website contains his biography, books about his operas, music on-line, and detailed information about his most famous operas: Manon Lescaut (1893), La Boheme (1896),Tosca (1900), Madama Butterfly (1904), Il Tabarro , Suor Angelica , Gianni Schicchi: a trio of short works (1918), and Turandot (1924).

To learn more about our tenor, Thiago Arancam, who stars in this production as Renato Des Grieux, visit his website at www.thiagoarancam.com. Thaigo was born in São Paulo, Brazil. Can you find that on a map? What other countries are around Brazil? What language do they speak there?

OPERA ON THE AIR
This week, Giuseppe Verdi's Shakepearean-inspired masterpiece, Macbeth, is broadcast on WRTI-FM. You can listen to it online or on the radio at 90.1FM beginning at 1 PM today.

It's sung in Italian and the cast includes:

Macbeth: Thomas Hampson

Lady Macbeth: Nadja Michael 


Macduff: Dimitri Pittas 
 


Banquo: Gunther Groissböck

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Until next week...