|
|
|
|
Opera Today, 1 August 2015 |
Anne Ozorio |
|
Puccini: Manon Lescaut, München, July 28, 2015 |
|
Manon Lescaut, Munich
|
Puccini’s Manon Lescaut at the Bayerische Staatsoper, Munich. Some will scream in rage but in its austerity it reaches to the heart of the opera. |
|
What is Manon Lescaut really about? The Abbé Prévost’s 1731 narrative was a
moral discourse. Unlike many modern novels, it wasn’t a potboiler but a
philosophical tract in which the protagonists face moral dilemmas.
In
this production, key excerpts from Prévost are shown at critical points, not
just during the Intermezzo. These are important because they underline the
origin of the opera, and its deepest values. The staging is black and white,
lit like an interrogation room, for such is its fundamental rationale. It’s
not a potboiler, not sentimental. but an uncompromising warning against the
seduction by false values like wealth, glitz and short term shallowness. It
says much about some audiences that they’d prefer things the other way
round.
Hans Neuenfels’s production, with designs by Stefan Meyer,
captures the spiritual state of flux that is so much part of Puccini’s
opera. The action moves from place to place but the underlying theme is
bleak. The journey starts at Amiens, a faceless place where everyone’s en
route to somewhere else. One characteristic of Neuenfels’s style is the way
he uses crowds. In his Lohengrin for Bayreuth (read more here), the people
of Brabant were shown as rats, since rats conform, but Neunfels treated them
not as vermin but with sympathy and warmth. In Manon Lescaut, the townsfolk
have garish makeup suggesting Georg Grosz-like malevolence beneath their
well-padded uniforms. Anonymous figures appear, zipped up in body bags. Not
“belle, brune et blonde” but dehumanized creatures, being trafficked,
presumably to America. Suddenly, the casual, flirtatious bantering feels
dangerous.
Neunfels’s use of crowds also serves to highlight the
central characters. Des Grieux (Jonas Kaufmann), Manon (Kristine Opolais)
and Lescaut (Marcus Eiche) stand out in sharp black and white, in full
focus. This is luxury casting, and so they should shine. Kaufmann and
Opolais “own” these roles these days If anything, they were singing with
even greater intensity than they did at the Royal Opera House production
last year. Kaufmann’s portrayal was exceptionally deep, enhanced by
Neuenfels’s emphasis on the moral and philosophical basis of Des Grieux’s
dilemmas, which are inherently dramatic in themselves.
In most
productions, Manon’s beauty steals the show. When Anna Netrebko pulled out
of the part, many sighed with relief, since Opolais has the artistic courage
not to need to be seen at her finest. When she sings, she creates a real
Manon with all her insecurities and complexities. She dares depict Manon’s
inner ugliness, because she can also show her true beauty. Opolais may look
tense in the first act and ravaged in the last, but that’s all the more
reason to admire her integrity. As she lies on the hard, bare stage that
depicts the spiritual desert that is New Orleans, (where physical deserts
don’t exist), with her face gaunt and the dark roots in her hair showing,
Opolais’s voice transcends her surroundings. Manon is a true hero because
she changes, develops and learns true meaning.
The staging of the
Paris Act makes or breaks any production, since it confronts the obscenity
of Manon’s situation as, frankly, a one-man prostitute. The stage shrinks,
lit by a frame of light suggesting a prison without bars, with cut glass
objets de luxe symbolizing hard but fragile transparency. All is delusion,
the makeup, the madrigals, the dancing. Geronte (Roland Bracht) fancies
himself an artist. His friends and Abbé’s aren’t fooled. They’ve come to
perve at Manon’s body. In London, many in the audience were aghast that the
scene was shown as live porm, but that’s exactly what it is, a rich man
showing off to dirty old men like himself. It’s not meant to be pretty, as
any reading of Puccini’s score makes clear.
Neuenfels shows Geronte
kissing Manon’s naked leg. The Dancing Master is depicted as an ape, which
adds even more horror. Yet Neuenfels also shows that the Dancing Master and
Manon have much in common, both reduced to performing animals by the
corruption of wealth. Geronte’s friends and, signifcantly, Abbés, supposedly
celibate holy men, are dressed as cardinals in fuschia pink. This is not
casual detail, for it connects to the brutality of a society that reveres
woman as virgins, but objectifies them as sexual creatures to be abused and
disposed of.
At Le Havre, Manon is seen in anonymous grey. The
gloating crowd with their red wigs now seem demonic,as they are indeed,
since they’ve come to enjoy seeing the degradation of women as prisoners. In
contrast, the Sergeant seems more human, since he lets Des Grieux slip
aboard, no doubt breaking rules. By the time we reach the all-impotant final
act, all external trappings are disposed of, too. Manon and Des Grieux are
alone, in almost cosmic isolation. All distractions stripped away, Kaufmann
and Opolais can release emotions through the sheer power of their singing.
Divested of material things they transcend the world itself.
Superlative conducting from Alain Altinoglu, too, leaner than Pappano, but
more suited to this elegant, austere conception. Of the three Manon Lescauts
in the last two years London, Baden Baden and Munich, this new production is
by far the most incisive and intelligent. Good opera goes far beyond the
first line in a synopsis. As Manon learns, life isn’t about glitzy
trappings, but about human emotion.
|
|
|
|
|
|