Skip to main contentSkip to navigationSkip to navigation
Higher class of musicianship … Sondra Radvanovsky as Manon with Aleksandrs Antonenko as Des Grieux and Nicholas Crawley as the Naval Captain in Manon Lescaut.
Higher class of musicianship … Sondra Radvanovsky as Manon with Aleksandrs Antonenko as Des Grieux and Nicholas Crawley as the Naval Captain in Manon Lescaut. Photograph: Bill Cooper
Higher class of musicianship … Sondra Radvanovsky as Manon with Aleksandrs Antonenko as Des Grieux and Nicholas Crawley as the Naval Captain in Manon Lescaut. Photograph: Bill Cooper

Manon Lescaut review – emotional power and a luminous central performance

This article is more than 7 years old

Royal Opera House, London
Jonathan Kent’s contemporary take on Puccini’s opera doesn’t always work, but Sondra Radvanovsky shines as the tragic heroine and Pappano brings precision and power to the score

It was with this, his third opera, that Puccini made his international breakthrough. In 1894, a year after its Turin premiere, music critic and later playwright George Bernard Shaw welcomed Manon Lescaut to Covent Garden, even hazarding a prescient guess that, on this basis alone, “Puccini seems to me more like the heir of Verdi than any of his rivals.”

Founded on the 34-year-old Italian’s exploratory, post-Wagnerian harmony and conspicuous flair for orchestration, the score’s remarkable technical assurance impresses again in this revival of Jonathan Kent’s production, first seen two years ago.

Antonio Pappano returns to conduct the piece, and as with his many other Puccini performances at this address he combines precision with flexibility while emphasising the composer’s skill in shaping complex musical structures to dramatic ends. The intermezzo before act three – where Wagner’s influence on Puccini is at its most assertive – sweeps along with a terrific emotional power, while elsewhere Pappano is, as always, highly responsive to the needs of his singers.

Prévost published the first edition of his enduring novel in 1731. Puccini and his anonymous librettists themselves updated the action of the opera to the second half of the 18th century; Kent and his designer Paul Brown bring the story bang up to date, equating Manon with a modern sex-worker and her exploitative brother and his associates with contemporary traffickers.

Impassioned moments ... Sondra Radvanovsky as Manon with Aleksandrs Antonenko as Des Grieux. Photograph: Bill Cooper

It’s a debatable move, most effective in the opera’s first two acts, though by the time we reach the third, narrative focus and clarity are compromised. In the original, Manon is taken on board a ship to be deported from France to America. Here, she and the other condemned women walk a carpet of shame in front of an audience whose derision is egged on by a glitzy TV host, though where they are and whither going is left vague. The final scene finds the victimised heroine expiring in the arms of Des Grieux on a crumbling piece of motorway that could be anywhere.

Apart from Pappano’s conducting, the fine playing of the orchestra and the consistent engagement of the chorus, where this revival scores most highly is in Sondra Radvanovsky’s Manon. Her clean, accurate and luminously voiced performance shows a discriminating sense of style that elevates her interpretation into a higher class of musicianship, and a keen appreciation of the text’s significance.

By her side Aleksandrs Antonenko’s big, beefy Des Grieux is comparatively rough, though he’s undeniably ready. His may not be an ideal tenor for the role – there’s not much lyric warmth to his metallic tone, and even less nuance – but it’s an exciting sound, and he hurls himself enthusiastically at the volatile score’s many ultra-impassioned moments.

No one else gets much of a look-in in this opera, but vocal heavyweight Eric Halfvarson embodies effectively Manon’s predatory admirer Geronte, while Levente Molnár suggests the easygoing sleaziness of the brother who pimps her and Luis Gomes the youthful vitality and bonhomie of student Edmondo.

  • In rep at the Royal Opera House, London, until 12 December. Box office: 020-7304 4000.

Comments (…)

Sign in or create your Guardian account to join the discussion

Most viewed

Most viewed