Name: Manon Lescaut
Start: 1983-08-01T00:00:00.000Z
End: 1983-08-01T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Royal Opera House

Organization

Conductor

Giuseppe Sinopoli

Stage director

Götz Friedrich

Set designer

Günther Schneider-Siemssen

Costume designer

Aliute Meczies

Lighting designer

Robert Bryan

Soprano

Kiri Te Kanawa

Manon Lescaut

Baritone

Thomas Allen

Lescaut

Tenor

Plácido Domingo

The knight René Des Grieux

Robin Leggate

Edmond

Bass

Roderick Earle

The naval captain

Geronte de Revoir

Mezzo-soprano

Anna Cooper

A singer

John Fryatt

The dance master

Handel Thomas

Sergeant of the Archers

Mark Curtis

A lamplighter

Royal Opera House

Orchestra

Orchestra of the Royal Opera House

Others

Chorus of the Royal Opera House

English

London

United Kingdom

Manon Lescaut is a heroine I believe in," wrote Giacomo Puccini to his publisher Giulio Ricordi. Experience Puccini's third opera and first big success in Götz Friedrich's landmark 1983 production at the Royal Opera House. The extraordinary Plácido Domingo and Kiri Te Kanawa take on the roles of the Chevalier Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut, accompanied by the Royal Opera House Choir and Orchestra under the direction of Giuseppe Sinopoli.

Before Puccini's Manon Lescaut premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin in 1893, the Abbé Prévost's famous eponymous novel had already inspired two other operas: Auber's in 1856 and Massenet's in 1884. But in creating his own Manon, Puccini chose to portray a kind of heroine very different from Massenet's frivolous and fragile incarnation. He instead tells a tragic tale of a condemned love, in all of its modern complexity, using a musical language of harmonic subtlety and audacious instrumentation. Following the Wagnerian principle of "continuous opera", the orchestra provides an uninterrupted musical commentary that helps depict the characters inner feelings, an operatic evolution that had begun with Verdi. The 1893 premiere in Turin—a week before Verdi's Falstaff at La Scala—was a great triumph, and led to Puccini's consecration as the heir to Verdi's artistic legacy. Manon Lescaut also constituted the first in a long line of collaborations with the librettists Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica, who would both play a major part in Puccini's next three successes: La Bohème, Tosca, and Madame Butterfly.

Public

Approved

Production booklet

Further reading