[Met Performance] CID:155190



Manon Lescaut
Metropolitan Opera House, Mon, November 27, 1950

Debut : Mario Del Monaco




Manon Lescaut (80)
Giacomo Puccini | Luigi Illica/Giuseppe Giacosa/Marco Praga/Ruggero Leoncavallo
Manon
Dorothy Kirsten

Des Grieux
Mario Del Monaco [Debut]

Lescaut
Giuseppe Valdengo

Geronte
Gerhard Pechner

Edmondo
Thomas Hayward

Innkeeper
George Cehanovsky

Solo Madrigalist
Margaret Roggero

Dancing Master
Alessio De Paolis

Sergeant
Clifford Harvuot

Lamplighter
Paul Franke

Captain
Osie Hawkins


Conductor
Fausto Cleva







Review 1:

Review of Cecil Smith in Musical America

Mario del Monaco, a young Italian tenor who came to this country for the fall season of the San Francisco Opera, made his debut at the Metropolitan in a guest appearance as Des Grieux in Puccini's Manon Lescaut. The many strong qualities in his performance and the warm enthusiasm of the audience left little doubt that he will be a strong addition to the roster if the management, after this trial balloon, decides to engage him next season.

Gifted with an admirable voice, good looks, and a slender figure, Mr. Del Monaco revealed no faults that a little grooming could not eliminate. The high notes were the most striking feature of his voice. After he had abandoned the rather pinched production that marred his singing in the first act, he showed that he could send across the pit the resonant, free tones that make the work of an Italian tenor exciting and guaranteed him a permanently enslaved audience. His middle voice was somewhat less distinctive, although in the tragic music of the last act it took on a warmth and roundness it had not possessed earlier. Stylistically his singing was a bit crude, but not really distressingly so; and his shortcomings of legato and phrasing were counterbalanced by dynamic and powerful accentuation that often suggested the delivery of Giovanni Martinelli. As an actor for the American audience, he was hampered by an addiction to exaggerated demonstrations that persist in Italian opera houses, and he was rather too ready to turn on a set musical-comedy smile. But he is obviously alert and responsive, and it would be no great task to coach him in the sort of stage deportment preferred on this side of the Atlantic.

Review 2:

Irving Kolodin in the Saturday Review
As if Tucker, Bjoerling, Tagliavini, Conley, Baum (to mention only those who have already appeared) were insufficient tenors for the fortnight of opera, Rudolf Bing presented Mario del Monaco, a bird of passage from the San Francisco season to his native Italy as Des Grieux in a recent “Manon Lescaut.” Something about Valentino-size in build, Del Monaco has character in his voice and assurance in his manner. To be sure, the character is that learned in the rafter-ringing Italian school, but he actually held the pose required of him at the end of a “Donna non vidi mai” (in Act I) which evoked free as well as subsidized bravos, and otherwise showed that he could charm as well as overpower. Del Monaco yields to no one in estimation of Del Monaco’s art, but he is a sure, well-schooled vocalist who might even forego a needless sob or two if he were talked to earnestly. With a vocal quality sometimes suggesting the younger Martinelli, Del Monaco is likely now to be with us more frequently.

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