Manon is the most beautiful woman in the operatic art!
These are the words of a director Pier Francesco Maestrini who is staging the new opera production, the opera Manon Lescaut of Giacomo Puccini, with the premiere performance on 26 February at the National Theatre in Belgrade and 29 February at the Opera & Theatre Madlenianum, continuing thus the successful cooperation of our two theatres.
Although there are exceptional modern tendencies in operatic creation, Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) is even today, together with Verdi, the sovereign lord of opera stages. Puccini began a genre revolution, connecting music and dramaturgy in a way that only drama and, later, the film industry could parry. His operatic style represents more or less harmonious blend of brutality and sentimentality. He was born in Lucca, a small town in Tuscany and he graduated from the Conservatory in Milan. With a great talent for opera theatre, Puccini devoted himself solely to operatic composition. After his first attempts (Le villi/ The Willis 1884, Edgar 1889) and his first major successes (Manon Lescaut 1893), he gained worldwide fame with his most significant and popular works: La Bohème (1898), Tosca (1900) and Madama Butterfly (1904). They are followed by The Girl of the Golden West (1912), La Rondine/ The Swallow (1917), The Triptych (The Cloak, Suor Angelica, Gianni Schicchi in 1918) and finally his swan song, Turandot (performed in 1926). One of Puccini's successes lies in the happily chosen librettos. Being the man with a confident theatrical instinct, Puccini could feel the stage, was looking for exciting dramatic conflicts, cherishing a cult of great gestures and desperate cries which resulted from intense passions.
This is how Puccini formulated the secret of every theatrical success: "There are three laws when it comes to theatre: to arouse interest, to surprise and touch." Therefore, it is not surprising that his works are still popular today and Manon Lescaut captures with its original musical inspiration, unique in his complete creation, which is the reason it even today belongs to the most beautiful works of operatic literature.
Manon Lescaut is one of the most complex roles of operatic literature. Her beauty, a mixture of innate elegance and natural naivety, along with her greed and, particularly, her brother's greed are the framework of the plot.
The Team of Authors and Casta
