The Faber Pocket Guide to Opera (58 page)

In performance

An opera about the dreams, illusions and disappointments which beset the artist,
Les
Contes
d’Hoffmann
presents a wide range of theatrical possibilities.
John Schlesinger’s production at Covent Garden is a handsome, traditional pantomime spectacle; for the Paris Opéra, Patrice Chéreau explored the opera’s darker side and interpreted its significance more allegorically, culminating with a striking final image of the scenery vanishing into the flies and leaving a completely bare stage; in San Francisco, Christopher Alden took a more bleakly expressionist line, his set dominated by a huge blank page of manuscript paper and a quill dripping blood rather than ink.

Recordings

CD: Placido Domingo (Hoffmann); Joan Sutherland (Olympia, Antonia, Giulietta); Richard Bonynge (cond.).
Decca 417 363 2

Video: Placido Domingo (Hoffmann); Georges Prêtre (cond.).
Covent Garden production.
NVC Arts 0630 19392 3

Jules Massenet

(1842–1912)

Manon

Five acts. First performed Paris, 1884.

Libretto by Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille

Massenet’s greatest success – perhaps the best of the many operas to be based on Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel,
Manon
Lescaut.
It brilliantly combines rococo pastiche with sentimental romanticism and paints a strong portrait of the contrary yet sympathetic heroine.

Plot

In the courtyard of a provincial inn, two lecherous gentlemen, Guillot and Brétigny carouse with local ‘actresses’.
Lescaut greets his pretty young cousin Manon, who dismounts from the coach that is taking her to a convent.
Manon longs for a life of fun and luxury, and is soon the recipient of Guillot’s attentions.
He plans to abduct her, but instead she runs off to Paris in Guillot’s coach with des Grieux, an ardent and sincere young nobleman she has met outside the inn.

Manon and des Grieux set up a modest home together.
Des Grieux writes to his father to ask permission to marry Manon, but she seems reluctant to commit herself further.
Manon is told that des Grieux’s father plans to remove him from his dissolute life, and during des Grieux’s absence, Lescaut persuades her to throw her lot in with the wealthy Brétigny, who will set her up as a fine lady.
She prepares to leave, bidding the apartment a tearful farewell.
Des Grieux returns and tells her of his sad dream, in which he was separated from her.
When he answers a knock at the door, he is seized by his father’s agents.
Manon is full of remorse for her complicity in the plot.

Some months later, Manon is the toast of fashionable Paris.
She visits the thronging pleasure gardens of Cours-la-Reine on Brétigny’s arm.
Guillot is still smarting from the
way Manon tricked him at the inn and plots revenge on her.
Manon overhears des Grieux’s father tell Brétigny that des Grieux is about to enter the priesthood and will preach his first sermon at St Sulpice that day.
She resolves to visit him.

After his sermon, des Grieux’s father vainly persuades him to marry respectably and settle, but he expresses himself determined to enter the priesthood.
Alone, he prays for peace of mind.
Then he confronts Manon: his anger at the way she treated him melts when she ardently begs him for forgiveness and they soon reassert their love for each other.

In a disreputable gambling hall, Lescaut, Guillot and the actresses play cards.
Manon enters with des Grieux, who needs cash to compensate for the exhaustion of his inheritance. Des Grieux accepts a challenge from Guillot, but when he repeatedly wins, Guillot vindictively accuses him of cheating and sees his chance for revenge.
He turns des Grieux over to the police, and Manon is charged with prostitution.

Des Grieux’s father intervenes to ensure his son’s release, but Manon has been sentenced to deportation.
Lescaut and des Grieux’s plot to rescue Manon fails, but on the road to Le Havre, Lescaut manages to bribe the guards to allow him some time with Manon.
He leaves her alone with des Grieux, and the lovers remember past happiness before Manon dies, begging des Grieux’s forgiveness for the shame she has brought on him.

What to listen for

The opera is too long and slow to get started (almost every performance is cut to some degree), but none the less irresistible for its sensitive, touching and delicately coloured characterization of the joys and tribulations of young love.
The contrast between romantic passion and rococo pastiche is brilliantly handled.
Note the use of rhythmically accented spoken dialogue over orchestral accompaniment – a device known as
mélodrame.

For any lyric soprano with some coloratura facility, Manon will rank as one of the great roles.
At a technical level, it is
cunningly paced, with the short, dainty and wistful arias (‘Je suis encore’ and ‘Adieu, notre petite table’) tactfully spaced between Acts I and II, and the coloratura fireworks exploding in the central Cours-la-Reine scene, by which time the voice is well warmed for the big emotional guns of Acts IV and V Massenet and his librettist also provide her with a trio of girls – the giggling and chattering ‘actresses’ Javotte, Poussette and Rosette – who constitute her backing group and support act.
Des Grieux is a less richly drawn figure, but the tenor is offered plenty of gratifying music to sing.
Sadly, there are very few first-class French tenors today, and what you are likely to hear is a one-size-too-large Hispanic or American substitute who will be happier with the ardour of Acts IV and V than the gentle, heady sweetness called for in Acts I and II.

In performance

Although
Manon
is a pretty and touching opera rather than a front-rank masterpiece, it does not have to be staged as a chocolate-box fantasy.
The central emotional situation is strong, and a director like David McVicar at ENO can emphasize its darker undercurrents, subtly reminding an audience that Manon is as much the victim of prurient pimping as she is the venal coquette.

Recording

CD: Victoria de Los Angeles (Manon); Pierre Monteux (cond.).
EMI 7 63549 2

Werther

Four acts. First performed Vienna, 1892.

Libretto by Edouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann

Adapted from Goethe’s epistolary novel,
The
Sorrows
of
Young
Werther.

 Plot

A small town in Germany in the 1780s.
Charlotte, daughter of a widowed magistrate (known in the opera as Le Bailli), is betrothed to the sensible Albert, but during his absence she has come to know the melancholy young poet Werther, who is visiting the town.
Werther is enchanted by Charlotte’s simplicity and sincerity as she looks after her younger siblings, and delights in their shared taste for the poetry of Klopstock.

Following a ball which they have both attended, Charlotte and Werther walk home through the moonlight.
After she tells him of the tragedy of her mother’s early death and the responsibilities she has been left with, Werther declares his love for her.
Then news comes that Albert has unexpectedly returned and, to Werther’s dismay, Charlotte reveals that on her mother’s deathbed she promised that she would marry him.