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Gloucestershire Echo, June 25, 2014 |
By Colin Davison |
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Puccini: Manon Lescaut, Royal Opera House London, June 24, 2014 |
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Manon Lescaut, RoH Live, Vue Cinema Stroud and other locations
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Rating: ***** |
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Saints or more often sinners, creatures to be adored, won, bought and
abandoned. You have to admit Puccini had a thing about women.
There
are elements of all those powerful characters to come – Mimi, Butterfly,
Turandot, Angelica – in this, his first hit. There’s even a fallen woman
called Violetta forced into exile with Manon.
Modern though many of
his later operas may be in their social attitudes, most are so rooted in a
particular historical setting, that they are always played in period. Not so
this story of the woman who wants everything.
Director Jonathan Kent
and designer Paul Brown put the piece in a very contemporary setting, the
designs moving from an apartment block through increasingly symbolic,
“emotional landscapes” to Manon’s death in America on a shattered freeway
bridge.
Some, as senior director Kasper Holten admitted, would have
hated that. Was that why there were no on-screen tweets?
I remember a
dreadful Glyndebourne touring hand-jiving production of The Magic Flute that
director Peter Sellars set under a motorway fly-over, but this time the idea
worked – the shallowness, the broken dream that associated wealth with
happiness.
It’s easy to forget how shocking these operas were in
their time – and to overlook how Manon and Violetta earned their living.
Not here. When Maurizio Muraro’s voyeuristic Geronte shows off his
mistress to friends, it’s in a soft-porn movie.
Latvian soprano
Kristine Opolais captured the early naivety of the heroine and her swift
descent through passion and avarice to degradation.
Her silky voice
in “In quelle trine morbide” seemed perfectly to match her situation. And
she would have deserved part of that ovation just for the nerve of taking
her curtain call still dressed as a tart.
Jonas Kaufmann, reliable as
a German defensive back four, complemented her ideally as De Grieux in the
love duets. Intelligent, fluent, surely he is the most watchable tenor
around.
A benefit for cinema audiences were the enthusiastic short
presentations by the charmingly slightly old-fashioned Antonio Pappano.
“Wondrous,” bubbled the conductor over a favourite passage. Wondrous indeed.
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