|
|
|
|
The Independent, 18 June 2014 |
Michael Church |
|
Puccini: Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera House London, June 17, 2014 |
|
'Radiates a very modern sleaziness'
|
|
Flamboyantly designed by Paul
Brown, Jonathan Kent’s production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut could not be
more different from Laurent Pelly’s daintily stylised Belle Epoque version
of Massenet’s take on the story which we saw in the same house four months
ago.
The curtain rises on a downmarket hotel-plus-bar peopled by a
bunch of teenagers led by an exuberant Edmondo (Benjamin Hulett) in party
mode; Manon (Kristine Opolais) is deposited from a people-carrier, while
Geronte (Maurizio Muraro) and Lescaut (Christopher Maltman) radiate a very
modern sleaziness; Jonas Kaufmann’s Des Grieux has a grace redolent of
bygone days.
From the moment Kaufmann and Opolais embark – with
infinite delicacy - on their emotional journey, it becomes clear that this
is a vocal marriage made in heaven. His warmly burnished sound is balanced
by the exquisitely-nuanced purity of hers, and they are supported by a
performance in the pit, under Antonio Pappano, of rare refinement.
But Kent presents Manon’s Parisian high-life in contradiction to both music
and plot. Puccini’s fashionable courtesan becomes a soft-porn star reigning
amid vulgar bling; the chaste beauty of Opolais’s singing is undermined by
the voyeuristic sexuality she is directed to portray, and her exiling
becomes reality tv on a seedy waterfront. Only in the final act (on a ruined
flyover), with her farewell aria and the subsequent duet, does the
magnificent desolation of the music come centre-stage.
|
|
|
|
|
|