Manon Lescaut is an opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini, first performed in 1893 at the Teatro Regio in Turin. Based on the novel by the Abbé Prévost, it follows Manon, a young woman torn between the love of the student Des Grieux and the luxury offered by the elderly Geronte, from their meeting in Amiens to her death in exile in America. It was Puccini's first great success and the work that defined his style.
Act I. In Amiens, the student Des Grieux watches Manon, whom her family intends for the convent, step down from a coach. He falls in love at once, as he sings in "Donna non vidi mai". Learning that the rich old Geronte plans to abduct her, he acts first and flees with her to Paris.
Act II. Manon has left Des Grieux for luxury: she lives as Geronte's mistress, among hairdressers, musicians and dancing masters, but she is bored, as she admits in "In quelle trine morbide". Des Grieux finds her again and their passion revives. Surprised by Geronte, they delay their escape because Manon wants to take her jewels: she is arrested for theft and immoral living.
Act III. An orchestral intermezzo leads to the port of Le Havre. Manon is to be deported to America with other convicted women. After a failed attempt to free her, Des Grieux begs the ship's captain to let him embark and is given a place on board.
Act IV. On a desolate plain near New Orleans, Manon struggles on, exhausted, at Des Grieux's side. While he searches in vain for water, she sings of her despair in "Sola, perduta, abbandonata" and dies in his arms.
The subject had already produced a famous opera by Massenet, first performed in 1884, but Puccini insisted: he felt the story was his own and meant to treat it in the Italian manner, with desperate passion. The libretto passed through many hands, among them those of Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, future collaborators on La bohème. The premiere, on 1 February 1893 at the Teatro Regio in Turin, was a triumph that established Puccini, in the eyes of public and critics alike, as Verdi's heir.
The score has a youthful impetus that Puccini never quite recaptured. Des Grieux concentrates that ardour in "Donna non vidi mai" and in the great duet of the second act. The intermezzo between Acts II and III, a purely orchestral piece, distils the journey to Le Havre and is often played in concert. "Sola, perduta, abbandonata" closes the work with a bare lament, carried almost by the voice alone.
Manon Lescaut lets us watch the Puccini of the great titles come into being: the taste for fragile heroines, the storytelling orchestra, the direct emotion. It is performed less often than La bohème or Tosca, and for that very reason holds discoveries for anyone who approaches it.
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