Manon Lescaut - Schedule, Program & Tickets
Manon Lescaut
Dramma lirico in four acts
Libretto after Abbé Prévost by Ruggero Leoncavallo, Marco Praga, Domenico Oliva,
Luigi Illica, Giuseppe Giacosa, Giulio Ricordi, Giuseppe Adami and the composer
World premiere on February 1, 1893 in Turin
Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on December 19, 2004
In Italian with German and English surtitles
2 hours 45 minutes / A break
"What have I to do with heroes and immortal characters? In such environment I do not like it. I'm not the musician of big things, I feel the little things, and only I love to handle them. ... that's how I liked Manon because she was a girl of heart and not anymore. "(Giacomo Puccini)
With MANON LESCAUT, Giacomo Puccini celebrated his first great success as an opera composer. As with his later world successes here is a female figure in the center. Manon, Mimì, Tosca, even Minnie, the "girl from the Golden West", who knows how to deal so confidently with revolver and prayer book, and finally Liù (TURANDOT) fit into this series of extraordinary women, their tenderness and vulnerability only by their determination and their unconditional dedication to love. They are all interesting, because they are never just perpetrators or victims, not even Cio-Cio-San, who in the end even determines their fate. They follow their hearts, but without great gestures and empty pathos. Perhaps it is this straightforwardness that made her so attractive to Puccini, a straightforwardness that matched his ideal of simplicity. They are not heroines in the classical sense, the Puccini women, and they are not angels either.
The young handsome Manon, who leaves her lover Des Grieux without hesitation to live with the well-heeled, though unloved Geronte, has such a pronounced penchant for luxurious diversion that she gives her pleasure in pleasure her own happiness, in the end even her Life sacrifices. For though she decides to return to Des Grieux, she does not want to miss the comforting certainty of material well-being. Had she refrained from packing her jewelry when the police arrived at her door at the instigation of Gerontes, she might have escaped arrest and subsequent deportation.
Abbé Antoine François Prévost, whose novel "History of the Chévalier Des Grieux and the Manon Lescaut" Puccini served as a template, had clearly outlined the "strange" character of Manon: "Never did a young girl hang less on her money than she, but she had no peace Moment at the thought that she must suffer hardships. What she needed was fun and distractions; If she could have enjoyed herself without spending money, she would never have touched even one sou. "With surprising unscrupulousness, the young woman understands how to achieve her goals, but that does not diminish her charm either for her lovers or for the composer.
Passionate feeling, strong contrasts, an entirely unsentimental view of flesh-and-blood people, their weaknesses, but also their suffering of caprice and social oppression - in his opera Puccini manages to create a fascinating spectrum of colors and moods. His starting conditions were anything but ideal, as he had chosen a substance that had already been processed several times before. He had to first of all to Jules Massenet's MANON, premiered in 1884 with great success, and was working with his numerous librettists - in the textbook are called up to seven authors - strives to be as possible no parallels to Massenet recognizable. In fact, the two works are fundamentally different. Puccini himself once said: "Massenet 's music will be felt French - powder puff and minuet - my Italian passion and despair." Passion and desperation, but also a good deal of realism, have turned the story into a rousing and ultimately shattering story idiosyncratic woman made of strong attraction, not a heroine, but a "girl of heart".
Subject to change.
Libretto after Abbé Prévost by Ruggero Leoncavallo, Marco Praga, Domenico Oliva,
Luigi Illica, Giuseppe Giacosa, Giulio Ricordi, Giuseppe Adami and the composer
World premiere on February 1, 1893 in Turin
Premiere at the Deutsche Oper Berlin on December 19, 2004
In Italian with German and English surtitles
2 hours 45 minutes / A break
"What have I to do with heroes and immortal characters? In such environment I do not like it. I'm not the musician of big things, I feel the little things, and only I love to handle them. ... that's how I liked Manon because she was a girl of heart and not anymore. "(Giacomo Puccini)
With MANON LESCAUT, Giacomo Puccini celebrated his first great success as an opera composer. As with his later world successes here is a female figure in the center. Manon, Mimì, Tosca, even Minnie, the "girl from the Golden West", who knows how to deal so confidently with revolver and prayer book, and finally Liù (TURANDOT) fit into this series of extraordinary women, their tenderness and vulnerability only by their determination and their unconditional dedication to love. They are all interesting, because they are never just perpetrators or victims, not even Cio-Cio-San, who in the end even determines their fate. They follow their hearts, but without great gestures and empty pathos. Perhaps it is this straightforwardness that made her so attractive to Puccini, a straightforwardness that matched his ideal of simplicity. They are not heroines in the classical sense, the Puccini women, and they are not angels either.
The young handsome Manon, who leaves her lover Des Grieux without hesitation to live with the well-heeled, though unloved Geronte, has such a pronounced penchant for luxurious diversion that she gives her pleasure in pleasure her own happiness, in the end even her Life sacrifices. For though she decides to return to Des Grieux, she does not want to miss the comforting certainty of material well-being. Had she refrained from packing her jewelry when the police arrived at her door at the instigation of Gerontes, she might have escaped arrest and subsequent deportation.
Abbé Antoine François Prévost, whose novel "History of the Chévalier Des Grieux and the Manon Lescaut" Puccini served as a template, had clearly outlined the "strange" character of Manon: "Never did a young girl hang less on her money than she, but she had no peace Moment at the thought that she must suffer hardships. What she needed was fun and distractions; If she could have enjoyed herself without spending money, she would never have touched even one sou. "With surprising unscrupulousness, the young woman understands how to achieve her goals, but that does not diminish her charm either for her lovers or for the composer.
Passionate feeling, strong contrasts, an entirely unsentimental view of flesh-and-blood people, their weaknesses, but also their suffering of caprice and social oppression - in his opera Puccini manages to create a fascinating spectrum of colors and moods. His starting conditions were anything but ideal, as he had chosen a substance that had already been processed several times before. He had to first of all to Jules Massenet's MANON, premiered in 1884 with great success, and was working with his numerous librettists - in the textbook are called up to seven authors - strives to be as possible no parallels to Massenet recognizable. In fact, the two works are fundamentally different. Puccini himself once said: "Massenet 's music will be felt French - powder puff and minuet - my Italian passion and despair." Passion and desperation, but also a good deal of realism, have turned the story into a rousing and ultimately shattering story idiosyncratic woman made of strong attraction, not a heroine, but a "girl of heart".
Subject to change.
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