Manon Lescaut


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Manon Lescaut

“…If this opera is not a success, I will look for another profession!” Giacomo Puccini could hardly have described his financial and emotional state more plainly than he did in this comment made to a subsequent director of the opera. Of the works which the composer had produced for the stage prior to this time, the first (Le villi) had been a considerable success, the second (Edgar) a dismal failure. Barely 35 years of age, Puccini came from a poor family, and was really only able to survive the years prior to the premiere of his Manon Lescaut in 1893 thanks to the generosity of his patron, the Milan music publisher Giulio Ricordi. But even this source of support had become rather uncertain, since the majority of the publisher’s shareholders wanted to terminate the relationship with Puccini following the failure of Edgar. The fact that Giulio Ricordi nevertheless continued to support Puccini, even helping the young man, whose self-confidence had taken a severe knock, back on his feet again, says a great deal for the former’s musical instinct. Notwithstanding this, Ricordi and Puccini first had to overcome certain differences between them with respect to the subject of this third opera. As early as 1885, whilst Puccini was still working on Edgar, the librettist Ferdinando Fontana had talked of a dramatic adaptation of Prévost’s L’Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. However, the tremendous success which Jules Massenet had achieved in Paris with his musical adaptation of the same material just a year before made the astute publisher reluctant to take up this theme. Ricordi therefore suggested a number of different dramatic concepts to Puccini, all of which the composer turned down, however. Finally Puccini’s infectious enthusiasm for the Manon Lescaut theme must apparently have dispelled his misgivings. But in 1889 it was not Fontana, who had provided the texts for Le villi and Edgar, who was commissioned with the libretto, but Marco Praga and Domenico Oliva. It was the former who was to determine the structure of the piece and the order of the scenes, whilst the latter was to pen the verses for it. However, Puccini’s constant requests for changes wore down Praga und Oliva to such an extent that both very soon threw in the towel. No fewer than eight persons – including two musicians, Ruggero Leoncavallo and Puccini himself – worked on the libretto before the final version of the text was completed. These circumstances, coupled with the fact that the result was an “arrangement sustained by leaps in the narrative”, meant that the opera was frequently targeted by the critics during the course of its reception history. However, Puccini did not compose the music in one go either, and had by no means completed it by the date of the premiere, making further slight changes to it up until 1922/23. Notwithstanding this, the opera has successfully remained in the repertoires of international opera houses to this day. The fact that the work bears the title Manon Lescaut seems logical at first sight, the purpose being to differentiate it from Massenet’s work with a more or less identical storyline, but simply called Manon. However, on further reflection one asks oneself why Puccini did not simply give the entire piece the name of Des Grieux. Though both names feature equally in the title of the novel on which the opera is based, it is definitely Des Grieux and not Manon who is at the centre of Puccini’s adaptation. Puccini's attempt to reveal the emotions of the leading male character by means of music rather than text obviously shifts the spotlight away from the figure of Manon slightly – and there is evidence that the composer was aware of this as he worked. However, by this time the composition was already so far advanced that none of those involved wished to contemplate a dramaturgical about-turn. This is illustrated by Julius Korngold, the German-speaking world’s leading music critic in the first third of the 20th century, when he commented: “The title of the work fails to deliver the promise it makes.” It should be borne in mind, however, just how much change Manon’s melody and harmony undergo during the course of the opera. In the final act, they wander between “Tristan chroma” and almost Impressionist sounds, as the musicologist Josef-Horst Ledere put it. Compared with the part of Des Grieux, this musical narrative style is much more modern, making the figure of Manon more interesting again and thus to some extent perhaps justifying Puccini’s choice of title.
The idealistic and financial triumph which Puccini achieved with the premiere of Manon Lescaut made his remark about “looking for another profession” obsolete. Within a short space of time, the opera was being performed around the world, from Buenos Aires to St. Petersburg. After the London premiere, George Bernard Shaw even went so far as to describe Puccini as “the most likely successor to Giuseppe Verdi.” The Vienna premiere took place in 1908 at what was then the Imperial Jubilee Theatre (today’s Vienna Volksoper). In reviewing this work, some writers have even described this composition as more significant than La Bohème, Tosca or Madama Butterfly. Although the first performance at the Vienna State Opera only took place in November 1923, the opera remained on the programme for a total of two years with an excellent cast. Following previous versions by Günther Rennert (1956) and Otto Schenk (1986), Robert Carsen’s June 2005 production of Manon Lescaut is the third to have been included in the repertoire since the opera house on the Ring reopened after the war.