Is Manon Lescaut a victim or the architect of her own demise? A new production of Puccini’s tragic romance at the National Theatre puts her squarely at the center of her own undoing, while setting her story in a larger context which suggests that in a male-dominated society, women are doomed to be used and discarded. Love is no saving grace, just a false promise in an amoral, uncompromising world.
Just as she did in a previous production of Rodion Shchedrin’s Lolita, director Sláva Daubnerová places the opera in a bleak landscape evoking hopelessness and despair. The desert setting of the final act sets the visual tone throughout – a shabby motel in a dusty outpost in the first act, the bright lights of a big city reminiscent of Las Vegas (a city in a desert) in the second act, pitiless fencing and brutal cops in a deportation wasteland in the third. The stretch of lonely highway where Manon meets her fate is, appropriately, both surreal and hyper-realistic. And Alexandre Corrazola’s atmospheric sets are arguably the most interesting part of the entire production.
From the opening moments of the premiere, Manon’s character and fate were set. Arriving at the motel in a beat-up VW van with her brother, she already looked like a cheap whore, wearing shiny leather and too much makeup. And before a single note was sung, her brother had slapped her to keep her in line. The group of men cheerily singing “Ave, sera gentile,” the rousing choral ode to good times, turn out to be overgrown frat boys, ogling the centerspread in a Playboy magazine and peppering Des Grieux with paper wads after he proclaims his love for Manon. If that isn’t enough to portray a hostile environment, the guards in the third act literally dragging prostitutes out of a prison camp to be deported puts men firmly in their domineering place.
And yet Manon is clearly complicit. In a lush set piece in Act 2, she luxuriates in the pampering and vacuousness of being Geronte’s kept woman, her only complaint being boredom. Des Grieux’s surprise appearance ignites one of the opera’s few moments of passion, but it feels hollow. Manon comes off as fickle rather than ardent, willing to flip lovers like a light switch, while Des Grieux, portrayed largely as a nerd, never seems anything more than desperate. Even as Manon begs for a dying kiss in the opera’s closing moments, he stands at the other end of the stage, incapable of a genuine emotional connection.
This is a lot of baggage to carry around, and Bulgarian tenor Milen Božkov proved up to the task as Des Grieux, his piercing tenor dominating the stage for much of the evening. Moldovan soprano Ghiulnara Raileanu is a powerful performer who suffered with convincing agony as Manon, although her rounded voice never rose much above pleading. To be fair, the demands of her role in this treatment – abused ingénue one moment, sex kitten the next – would confound almost any singer. House regulars Lukáš Bařák (Manon’s brother) and František Zahradnicek (Geronte) were in good voice but otherwise shallow in their supporting roles. And it was easy to overlook another fine performance by the State Opera Chorus, which by design blended seamlessly into the scenery.
Italian conductor Simone Di Felice worked wonders with the State Opera Orchestra, crafting vibrant, colorful music from the opening notes that morphed into dark drama in the third act and full symphonic sound in the finale. Puccini’s bright score was often at odds with the action onstage, but to his great credit Di Felice kept the production tight with lively pacing and emotional impact that the characters often lacked. The woodwinds in particular were outstanding, carrying entire scenes with vivid solo lines.
Daubnerová’s contemporary setting of the piece gives the sexual politics an edge, with no punches pulled. In the third act, Manon and Des Grieux’s tearful reunion and desperate bid to stay together is almost a sidelight to the main action of captive women being abused by thuggish guards. No connections are drawn to current events, at least not overtly. But for an American sitting in the audience, it was impossible to watch people being violently deported against their will without feeling chills running up and down your spine.
