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The Guardian, 18 June 2014 |
Andrew Clements |
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Puccini: Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera House London, June 17, 2014 |
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Manon Lescaut review - Kaufmann's singing is exceptional
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Music standards are high, but Jonathan Kent's update to the present day
serves little obvious purpose.
It's more than 30 years since the
Royal Opera's last new staging of the work that brought Puccini his first
success. Productions of Manon Lescaut may not be as rare as that might
suggest – Jonathan Kent's version follows one at Welsh National Opera
earlier in the year – but like La Fanciulla del West, it's still a piece
that's closer to the edge than the core of the standard repertory.
Musically, Covent Garden has done the work proud, and the quality of the
performance is defined in the pit. Antonio Pappano has few peers today as a
Puccini conductor, and gives the score a tremendous sense of vivid
theatricality; the energy he injects into the finale of the second act is
irresistible, while the following orchestral intermezzo, surely the world of
Wagner's Tristan heard through Puccini's ears, is firmly fixed as the
opera's emotional heart.
The cast could hardly fail to respond to
such encouragement, and after a slightly subfusc start, all of them did.
Kristine Opolais manages Manon's transformation from good-time girl to
tragic victim wonderfully well, using silvery pianissimos to marvellous
effect, and while Jonas Kaufmann may not be the most vulnerable or moving
Des Grieux - he is a bit too confident and self-contained for that - his
singing, which seems to gain in weight and richness every time he appears
here, is exceptional. As Lescaut, Christopher Maltman has just the right mix
of cunning and charm; Maurizio Muraro is the insidiously predatory Geronte.
Kent's production, though, is less convincing. The designs, by Paul
Brown, bring the action up to the present day, to a world of wheelie bins
and people-carriers; the inn in Amiens becomes a bouncer-guarded gaming
club, Geronte's Paris house takes on the lurid kitsch of the red-light
district of Amsterdam or Hamburg as Manon entertains a row of elderly men
with a film crew on hand to record her gyrations. The parade of deportees at
Le Havre becomes a reality TV show, with ship's captain a tuxedoed emcee,
while the last act takes place on a crumbling motorway bridge, literally a
road to nowhere. Each on its own is a telling image; whether they tell us
anything about the opera is another matter.
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