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The Times, 18 Jun 2014 |
Richard Morrison |
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Puccini: Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera House London, June 17, 2014 |
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Manon Lescaut at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden
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We don’t call ladies like Manon Lescaut “fallen women” any more, but there
are plenty of modern-day Manons around. As Julie Burchill once observed:
“Wherever there are rich men trying not to feel old, there will be young
girls trying not to feel poor.”
That is surely Jonathan Kent’s view
too. Bringing Puccini’s earliest hit to the Royal Opera stage for the first
time in 30 years, he dumps the 18th-century context of Prevost’s novel, and
the late 19th-century world of Puccini himself, in favour of a thoroughly
contemporary interpretation.
Paul Brown’s ingenious set starts off as
half a modern apartment block (albeit improbably fringed with fairy lights)
and half the casino in which Maurizio Muraro’s gross, oligarch-like Geronte
will take advice from Christopher Maltman’s superb, pimpish Lescaut on how
to seduce Kristine Opolais’s opportunist Manon.
Not that she needs
much seduction. By Act II the set has swivelled to reveal Manon, now a
perv’s delight in a thigh-revealing Barbie doll outfit, knee-high socks and
blonde wig, giving live webcam sex shows from Geronte’s mansion to an
audience of leering, bald lechers. Later, Geronte’s olde-worlde madrigal is
turned by Manon into a bit of girl-on-girl action.
Well, that’s one
way of upstaging the supposed main attraction of this show: Jonas Kaufmann
as Des Grieux. Kent’s exuberant directorial inventions don’t stop there.
Manon’s trial and deportation is staged as a grotesque reality-TV court
scene. There is one surreal moment when the entire lighting rig is lowered
to become part of the action. And instead of the Louisiana desert, she and
Des Grieux end up on that quintessential symbol of urban desolation: a
buckled, derelict flyover.
Too many gimmicks? That might be the
danger with a more mundane cast than the Royal Opera has assembled here.
With Kaufmann and Opolais in such mesmerising form, however, there’s no
chance that the sets will eclipse the lovers.
One can quibble about
Kaufmann’s slightly muffled, un-Italianate consonants, or about Opolais not
having quite enough welly in the lower register to cut through the orchestra
— but not about the stream of glorious, lyrical tone that each produces, nor
about the intensity and touching pathos in that harrowing last act as they
clasp each other, alone, dying in despair, amid that twisted wasteland on an
otherwise dark stage. Puccini declared that he composed Manon Lescaut “with
a desperate passion”. That’s exactly what comes across here.
There is
a third star, perhaps eclipsing those on stage. It is Antonio Pappano, who
conducts this score as well as I have ever heard any Puccini conducted. From
the fizzing opening, through to the magnificently tragic dying cadences of
the Act III prelude and on to the bleak final scene, he and his brilliant
ROH Orchestra pace and shape the music with a passion and understanding that
is masterly. With tickets priced up to £250, you expect quality — but
music-making like this is pure gold.
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