Metropolitan Opera Archives

It is difficult to get too emotionally attached to Manon Lescaut or her fate, and the first performance of Puccini's opera this season by the Metropolitan Opera on Monday night was schizophrenic enough to draw attention to the problems with the work.

After all, "Manon Lescaut" does not quite follow the written rules of operatic drama. Manon is not wed against her will while being attracted to another. Her tragic fate arises for no discernible reason other than a petty character; she prefers luxury to love, then changes her mind.

In the first act of Gian Carlo Menotti's production, the schism in the opera is evident. Is this to be played for farce - as heard in the lighthearted mocking in the score - or drama? Why should anybody care whether Manon ends up with the callow Chevalier or the ancient Geronte? And so; despite the distracting bustle at the inn, there was little to hold our attention.

As if realizing this, nearly everybody oversang, ranging from Vasile Moldoveanu's exaggerated vocal gestures as the Chevalier to Allan Monk's somewhat overeager articulations as Lescaut to Kirk Redmann's sturdily boyish Edmondo. Italo Tajo was a caricature of Geronte, quaking from the character's supposed age and frustration. And even Teresa Zylis-Gara as Manon did little but preen, vocally and physically.

Some of this uncertainty carried over to the second act, when Desmond Heeley's mold-green interior was the setting for a minuet that was less lighthearted than merely routine. But then, when the opera shifted gears into its formulaic star-crossed-lovers mode, both Puccini's music, sensitively conducted by Nello Santi, and the central duo were on more comfortable ground.

Indeed, throughout the second half of the opera, it was best to think of the characters less as individuals than as operatic types. Miss Zylis-Gara, who ably grew into the tragic dimensions of her type, sang "Vieni!" with lyrical sophistication, making her condition more vivid in the music than it was in the drama. The staging of the third scene was most effective, with the prostitutes being led off to America like the nuns to the guillotine in Poulenc's "Dialogues des Carmelites." It was difficult to care much for the abstract Louisiana landscape of the final act, but the lovers' death duets were presented with skill and passion.

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