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The Arts Desk, 18 June 2014 |
by David Nice |
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Puccini: Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera House London, June 17, 2014 |
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Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera
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Vibrant, peerless singers and conductor sapped by invertebrate monster production |
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Puccini’s racy first masterpiece, like its successor La bohème, should feel
like an opera of two halves – the first full of youthful exuberance, the
second darker and ultimately tragic. The contrast here, alas, was between
vivacious performers and a sombre, sometimes confused updating by Jonathan
Kent which too often dwarfed or zapped their better efforts.
On the
minus side, any contemporary rendering of a slight-ish melodrama adapted
from Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel goes against the grain of the depicted
attempts to send our pleasure-loving young heroine first into a convent and
then, for prostitution, into exile, though I suppose Eastern European
trafficking could work. A plus might be pithier correspondences of this sad
tale about a girl destroyed by consumerism with Turnage’s Anna Nicole, due
to make a welcome return to the Royal Opera next season (and the irony of
sponsorship here by Rolex, the ultimate purveyor of must-have-but-don't-need
luxury, isn't lost). In the hands of that effective show’s director, Richard
Jones, this modern-dress take could have worked better. Unfortunately Kent
and his designer, Paul Brown, whose elaborate spinning sarcophagus for Don
Giovanni and polystylistic Rameau just about came off on the smaller stage
at Glyndebourne, give little sense of place or stage topography.
Why
the small modern flats or hotel rooms above the casino of Act One (the
meeting of Manon and Des Grieux pictured right), not to mention the wobbly
lamp-post, or the lighting rig that descends in Act Three, with some unclear
link to the filming before an invited audience of the sex-workers’ shipping
off across the Atlantic - an action feebly represented by a rip through a
giant fashion poster? The idea of Manon’s capitulation to sleazy banker
Geronte’s mansion, where she’s asked to participate in another media event,
a sex show for his dirty old men friends, is clearer, but manages to make
even the gorgeous Kristine Opolais grotesque in an ageing China Blue wig,
pink fluffy dress and high schoolgirl socks (pictured below straddling
Maurizio Moraro's Geronte) – maybe part of the point, but while it’s good
not to have the clichés of wink-wink rococo powder and paint, this overlards
the woman-as-object theme: Geronte surely wants to keep the girl glamorous
and for himself alone.
It most goes against the grain that the
dramatic intelligence of Opolais and Jonas Kaufmann is used to render their
passionate young lovers very often as depressed blank slates, starting with
a sombre stage picture to contradict the brilliant prelude and especially
hard on traumatised Manon. Puccini’s music, especially in the focused
vitality of Pappano and a Royal Opera orchestra on superb form yet again,
never stays still and, in its youthful impetuousness, rarely gives time for
the kind of inscaping which might have worked in a straight play. Vocally,
this usually brilliant pair sometimes sounds a bit lost in various spots
around the gigantic set, though both singers are absolutely up to the
considerable demands of their taxing roles.
Kaufmann starts, as
usual, with darker tone than we might expect from a sunshine-and-roses
Italian tenor – his lighter confrere Edmondo, more than promisingly sung by
Benjamin Hulett, is better suited to the studentish pranks of the first
scene – and then gets into gear, but with rather too many Italianate sobs
between phrases. Though one size lighter than a Del Monaco or a Corelli, he
still pulls the stops out for Des Grieux’s increasing despair, and ignites
the climactic third act.
Opolais has fewer opportunities for the
vocal colour and inflection she does so well, and the very top of the voice
doesn’t always bloom as I’ve heard it, but she is absolutely Kaufmann’s and
Pappano’s equal in the love-hungry thrust of the big Act Two duet, and
nails, Scotto-like, all but the very last phrase of the big solo alone, lost
and abandoned midway up the stage on the desert highway (pictured below
right). How good it is, too, to believe instantly when the chorus sing about
a "beautiful young girl" or Lescaut of a "handsome young man". And both are
stage naturals on whom all eyes are fixed.
Even the baritone in this
opera is very much a second fiddle, though Christopher Maltman puts plenty
of energy into Manon’s medallion-man brother, and there’s an admirably
understated, vocally disciplined Geronte from Maurizio Muraro. The only weak
turn among the bit parts is Jette Parker Young Artist Nadezhda Karyazina,
her too-fast vibrato working against the neoclassical line as a musician
required to fondle and be fondled by Manon in a kind of titillating lesbian
scene for the elderly.
Come the curtain-call, there were enthusiastic
cheers for the golden central couple, which seems fair – hard as it may have
been to care much for Manon’s pointless death less than a week after
witnessing the meaningful grace that descends on Poulenc’s Carmelites - and
for Pappano, no qualification needed, but some fierce booing for Kent and
his team. Certainly the show doesn’t merit that, but it’s no great addition
to the Royal Opera repertoire either. Close-ups in the livescreening should
help to pull it all more into focus.
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