Massenet’s Manon from the Gran Teatre del Liceu, Barcelona, or Roman noir as HD opera

Natalie Dessay and Rolando Villazon sang & acted Manon and her Chevalier with great aplomb

Dear friends and readers,

Tonight we went for the second time to the West End Cinema in Georgetown, DC, to see and to hear another HD opera from Europe, this time Massenet’s Manon out of one of my favorite eighteenth-century French novels, Prevost’s L’Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et Manon Lescaut. I enjoyed it very much, partly because I am, like many 18th century people (see J. R. Foster’s The History of the Pre-Romantic Novel) a lover of Prevost. Prevost’s Manon, even in an older English translation so riveted and moved me that I made it my business to read it in the original French, and then went on to read some of the larger novel in which it occurs (Mémoires et aventures d’un homme de qualité), much of Prevost’s finally tragic historical epic-romance, Histoire de Monsieur Cleveland, fils naturel de Cromwell, and then Jean Sgard’s fat literary biography, Prévost romancier. Prevost is one of the great writers of romance of any century. I felt that this opera and this specific production really captured much of the passionate despair, radical protest, and obsessive love of Prevost’s roman noir texts. You might say this was a highly successful yet original film adaptation of a novel 🙂

It wasn’t easy for the singers and everyone involved to do this. The script works to distance the watcher because everything is done so self-consciously, all the characters explain themselves several times over to one another; the costumes were highly ornate:

Dessay in a gorgeous red dress

and the blocking stylized as well as visually extravagant with a controlled wildness:

a symmetrical imprisonment

exultant dancing

Further, 19th century decorums, time, and what was thought stageable prevented the script or libretto writers (Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille) from presenting us with frank sexual scenes and a full panoply of amorality to which our hero and heroine are driven or choose to descend to.

The chaste presentation of their first sexual encounter

The other prostitutes: there was a lot of stage business to fill out the story: sexual encounters, some degrading; stealing, social pressure, manipulation, Marat/Sade vehicles

Nonetheless, the singing was so strong and the acting so magnificent with long scenes of letting go that the limitations of the enunciation were transcended. This was no Eurotrash framing; the people doing the opera did not feel they had to expose absurdities and undermine reactionary scenarios, but rather worked to make more explicit, more elaborate what Massenet had been at such pains to make us understand and sympathize with: two young people’s refusal to be co-opted and engulfed by an inhumane order which they cannot escape, must live in to survive (eat, have shelter) and which turns them to punish them when they disobey its repressive (and to them) hypocritical hierarchical laws.

From one turn of the story where Grieux is imprisoned to force him to become a priest (his father’s choice of profession for him, a typical gothic trope of the era which reflected social realities)

I really wanted to cry at the end when Villazon as Grieux grieved over the dying Dessay-Manon, lifting her of the cart, laying her limp body down, and we saw her hair dissheveled, her clothes filthy, a vision of the opening scene of the book. The first time the Chevalier sees her in the book, she has an iron collar around her neck and is chained into a row of women headed for prison or transportation. As here the book ends on the two of them trying to flee; they actually make it to America; in the opera, only a little beyond the cart and city walls.

Prevost’s Manon Lescaut is a tragic vision pulled out of a story that is like Moll Flanders, a pyschologized picaresque tale of criminal adventurers. Massenet’s Manon is tragic heroic opera pulled out of French grand opera. Prevost’s text as a novel of sensibility can be seen coming out in the actor’s lachrymose expressions (which I don’t mind in the least). At one point the action stopped and all the characters watched a ballet. The eighteenth century style costumes were filled with exaggerated colorful details, poverty combined with panache. The music reminded me a little of bel canto only much more melodramatic, and instead of repetitive patterns the lines were expressionist of the emotions going on at the moment of singing. The close-ups were wonderful and I again much appreciated the subtitles so I knew what was going on. If the translations into English were sometimes inaccurate, they provided the gist of the French so I could make out what the actors were literally singing.

The audience in Barcelona applauded and cheered long and hard for tremendous effort Natalie Dessay put into the part: such a small thin wiry woman to carry so much gravitas. Also for the daring open vulnerability played out by Rolando Villazon. Samuel Ramey was a dignified dense father; I loved his voice (though Jim said it “wobbled”). The other actor-singers were effective as corrupt protectors, libertines, innkeepers, prostitutes, street, inn, court and police people and the whole cast and chorus were whooped, clapped. Individuals doing Gavotte, Poussette and Rosette were great fun. The people in the West End Cinema seem not in the habit of clapping along the way the audience at our local HD opera where we see Met productions usually do, but a few people did clap with me for Dessay. The auditorium was much much fuller than for either of the two Eurotrash productions I’ve seen before, the excellent Claus Guth’s of Don Giovanni and the ridiculous Netherlands La Fanciulla del West. Basically the auditoriums then were empty. People got up talking about the performance which is a good sign.

The theater manager said there will be another season of operas from Europe in the Fall and I put Jim and my email address down on a list to be alerted. I recommend the house white wine (it comes chilled). Next week a real treat: Verdi’s Macbeth from the Royal Opera House, London, starring Simon Keeleyside. One of the interests of all three European operas we’ve seen so far is the difference between the way these European houses do these operas and the Met. The Met is much much more Broadway, Hollywoodized (I assume I’m inventing that word) somehow, hyped up, especially because of the all the framing, the interviews, the explanations drenched in self-praise and flattery. You are left along in peace to make up your mind.

Jim has now also bought 6 sets of tickets for plays, concerts, and events in the 3 week fringe festival next month. So, much pleasure and interest ahead.

Ellen