Manon: c'est la l'histoire...

Rooting for these crazy kids: Manon and her Chevalier, Act I
Photo (c) Ken Howard/Met Opera

I attended the opening performance of this season's Manon at the Met, and for fans of stylish, passionate singing, the rest of the run promises to be magnificent. Laurent Pelly's stylish, sinister production I found even more effective in revival than (apparently) I did in its first run. The bourgeois brutality and hypocrisy of which Manon and Des Grieux fall afoul were apparent from the first. And the setting in the fin-de-siècle, with its bustling urban spaces, conspicuous consumption, and religious anxiety (to say nothing of precarious social mobility and the precarious position of women in the public sphere,) really does work remarkably well. My customary raptures over the orchestra must in this case be modified. Their sound, while aptly lush, could be unfocused, and there were occasional lapses in stage-pit synchronization over the course of the evening. Emmanuel Villaume was, however, responsive to the singers in their (many!) challenging arias, and ensembles were well-supported, so matters may improve over the course of the run.

Manon: l'homme est très observateur

Manon and the male gaze
Photo (c) Ken Howard/Met Opera

Massenet's Manon, an opera about sex, scandal, and social status--oh, and true love--revolves around the character of its title heroine, and around others' perceptions of her. Manon is described as a sphinx even by her lover Des Grieux, and treated as a creature of caprice, but Laurent Pelly's production makes her a passionate young woman who pursues her own goals, playing perilous games with a hypocritical society. Maybe it was partially the updating to the 1880s which made me see the Manon of this production as a figure parallel to De Maupassant's Georges Duroy (Bel Ami): a provincial set on conquering Paris, an individual of insignificant antecedents but extraordinary personal beauty, for whom sex is not only a sensual pleasure, but a weapon of social conquest. The tone of Pelly's production seemed, like the opera's heroine, to hesitate between laughter and tears without quite knowing why. The voyeurism of male(-dominated) society was highlighted, as were Manon's resolute attempts at self-assertion within that society. But despite the near-ubiquity of sinister flâneurs, the trio of Poussette, Javotte, and Rosette were played as straightforwardly comedic, and even Guillot and de Bretigny were relatively non-threatening. In short, the production, while not devoid of style or ideas, did not always seem to have the courage of its convictions.

Fabio Luisi's leadership of the Met orchestra was light of touch, and sensitive to the quicksilver undercurrents in the score. Even when Massenet's characters dissemble, his orchestra reveals what they are thinking and feeling; Luisi and the Met forces did so with subtlety nearly always, and with well-timed escalations of passionate intensity. I especially appreciated the nuanced handling of the frequent ostinati in the strings, and the fine work of the woodwinds throughout. Anne-Carolyn Bird, with an agile, bright soprano and vivid presence, made a memorable Poussette. The Guillot of Christophe Mortagne was another standout: Mortagne sang with bright tone and assured diction, and acted with comic opera flair. David Pittsinger sang the Comte des Grieux with consistently elegant phrasing and rich, expressive sound; his Act III scene with Beczala was notable for its emotional nuance. Paulo Szot sounded somewhat grainy, but made a charismatic (and thoroughly caddish) Lescaut.

En elle tout séduit

The next time I desert this blog for a fortnight, Gentle Readers, I will try to give warning.  Half of this time I have spent working, and the other half emphatically not working, with a bevy of friends in a lake house far from the haunts of men (or at least the haunts of the internet); an idyllic retreat which had me humming "En fermant les yeux":

Admittedly, I often hum it in German, thanks to Fritz Wunderlich. But in either language, I find this irresistibly beautiful: the strings not only like wind and stream beside the little cottage, but like Des Grieux holding his beloved Manon in his arms.  Sigh.

Reine par la beauté

I'm always surprised by finding events which I'm excited about not sold out at the last minute.  But I was thrilled to be able to walk into the box office of the Teatro dell'Opera on Thursday and get two cheap tickets for Saturday's performance of Massenet's Manon (June 19.)  A note on these back-of-the-house seats: my assumption that "molto alto" in Rome would be just fine for one accustomed to standing at the top of the Met was correct.  The shape of the theater meant we did have to perch straight-backed on the edge of our seats to see the stage at all, but when we did, there was a fine view.  I missed only the very back of the stage... where, as it turned out, some Significant Recurring Themes were being illustrated, but more on that later.

First things first: a Really Shameful Confession is that I keep being surprised by Massenet.  Thais was the first of his operas I came to know, and based on this, and recordings of Manon and Werther where I failed to grasp either depth or subtlety, I had mentally classified his music as a bit... light: lovely, certainly, but tilting dangerously towards the trite and trivial.  I am, of course, recalibrating this opinion.  This January's Werther under Michel Plasson in Paris came as a glorious shock, even on a web stream.  While the Manon I saw in Rome may not have brought out musical and dramatic subtleties to that degree, I did get a sense of its cohesion, charm, and poignancy which had utterly eluded me in recordings.  The charm which is so often attributed to Manon and its eponymous heroine is a charm which I still find more in the music than in the drama.  While the conducting of Alain Guingal may not have brought out all the sparkle and all the irony that general enthusiasm leads me to suspect Manon of coyly hiding, it still enabled me to have many "aha!" moments in seeing how the music was hinting at things to come, reminding me of things past, hanging together, and keeping its momentum.   And I sympathized here with the besotted Des Grieux and the flighty Manon... I actually rooted for their too-insouciant happiness to continue, and felt genuinely sorry for Manon in her artificial splendor.