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Event
Manon (Gran Teatre del Liceu)
Manon (1884) is Massenet's most popular and famous work and a veritable paradigm of French opera. Based on L'histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost (Amsterdam, 1731), it follows the original more closely than most other operas on the same topic. It tells the tale of two adolescents an attractive young girl on her way to a convent and a provincial nobleman who has fallen madly in love with her who elope to Paris. There life's harsh realities uncover their true characters. Manon is ambitious and yearns for comfort and luxury to the point of betraying her lover and prostituting herself. The weak, ingenuous Des Grieux, on the other hand, falls into a milieu of gambling and violence. In the novel Manon is deported to Louisiana and dies there in the arms of her repentant lover; in the opera this episode is reduced to Des Grieux's bid to free her on the quayside at Le Havre, where she expires from exhaustion.
Massenet skillfully translates the different social groups and variegated atmospheres of Manon into music, depicting each with the appropriate color. The form of the opéra-comique offers him a multiplicity of styles and manners speech and song, recitative and arioso, Neoclassicism and Romantic expressiveness which fragment the work and make it unusually attractive. The chief high spots are Manon's arias "Je suis encor tout étourdie,"
"Adieu notre petite table" and "Je marche sur tous les chemins" those of Des Grieux his dream "En fermant les yeux, je vois là-bas," "Ah fuyez douce image" and "Manon, sphinx étonnant" and the duets "Nous vivrons à Paris, tous les deux" and the evocative "Manon! Tu pleures!"
Jules Massenet's Manon has a libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille. It is an opéra-comique in five acts, divided into six scenes, and was premiered at the Opéra-Comique in Paris in 1884. It triumphed from the very first night and has remained a paradigm of French opera, as was illustrated by the medallion to French opera which could be seen over the Liceu stage prior to the 1994 fire. It was first performed at the Liceu in 1894 and has been staged there 130 times in all.
October 1-2 at 10:00 am,
October 5 at 7:30 pm
Conducted by Victor Pablo Pérez
Directed by David McVicar
Choreographed by Michael Keegan-Dolan
Starring Natalie Dessay, Rolando Villazón, Samuel Ramey & Manuel Lanza
Sung in French with English subtitles
2 hrs 55 mins plus one intermission
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LocationBalboa Theatre
3630 Balboa St. @37th Ave
San Francisco, CA 94121
United States
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