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Chicago Tribune, 29 September 2008 |
By John Von Rhein |
Manon, Chicago, 27
September 2008
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A timely tale of greed, Lyric’s ‘Manon’ a triumph
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Gambling dens, kinky sex:
Lyric opener has great singing too |
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Opera doesn’t get any better than the brilliant
performance of Massenet’s “Manon” that opened the Lyric Opera of Chicago
season Saturday in the Ardis Krainik Theatre. While the alluring French
soprano Natalie Dessay’s vocally accomplished and dramatically fearless
account of the title role was the center of attention, this was one of those
shows where everything comes together on a high plane of excellence. Not for
a long while has the dressy gala throng gotten so much theatrical bang for
its bucks.
Although director David McVicar’s production predates the current Wall
Street meltdown by a decade, his gritty take on the greed, corruption, easy
money and easier impoverishment of pre-Revolutionary France hits home with
astonishing immediacy. In this world of lecherous aristocrats and willing
victims, everybody has his or her price, and that includes Manon Lescaut,
the country girl turned courtesan whose abrupt rise and tragic fall Dessay
charts to such heartbreaking effect.
For Manon, a heedless teenager who uses her beauty and charm to advance her
ambition, the choice is a no-brainer: Either it’s life in a convent or
it’s running off to Paris with the handsome Chevalier des Grieux. He’s
played here by the charismatic German tenor Jonas Kaufmann with an ardor and
incandescence that are fully a match for Dessay’s. You can’t take your eyes
off them.
As with every McVicar show, the glory lies as much in the details as in his
genius for orchestrating them into a totally believable society. Tanya
McCallin’s set suggests the blood sport of a bullring, in which rowdy
spectators take voyeuristic delight in everything we are seeing. Servants
spy on their masters, while the degenerate upper classes frolic in frivolous
extravaganzas and in gambling dens laced with kinky sex.
What a pleasure finally to hear a French soprano singing Manon at the Lyric!
Vocally Dessay has the delicacy and agility the music requires, along with
an unerring way of matching sound to dramatic truth. She bade touching
farewell to the lovers’ little table, sailed elegantly through the glittery
coloratura of her gavotte and held the audience rapt with her death scene.
At her side, Kaufmann sang like a dream—virile and impassioned, yet full
of soft tonal nuance and color, nowhere more so than in his “Ah! Fuyez douce
image.” A strong actor, he made Des Grieux a far more credible
flesh-and-blood figure than the callow youth portrayed in the text.
Conductor Emmanuel Villaume elicited a properly French sound from the fine
Lyric orchestra, and the chorus sang and acted with enthusiasm.
If this were Broadway, Lyric’s “Manon” would run for months, even years. As
it is, you have only until Oct. 31 to catch it. |
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