MANON LESCAULT • ZÜRICH
★★★★★☆
Photo: Toni Suter
REVIEW MANON LESCAULT: BARRIE KOSKY ON THE ROAD TO HELL IN ZURICH
Zurich Opera is in the super league of European opera houses. Here, my favorite director Barrie Kosky is currently presenting a wild staging of Manon Lescault that features a kind of decadent death masquerade of skeleton heads in chaotic mass choreography and magnificent set pieces.
The king of show-style opera productions does not disappoint his audience.
Puccini flopped with his first two operas Le Villy and Edgar. The publisher Riccordi was therefore not thrilled when the ambitious, but not yet successful Puccini presented the idea of making an Italian version of Manon Lescault, which French composer Massenet had put into opera a few years earlier.
Photo: Toni Suter
Puccini stuck to his guns. Massenet’s version is French and full of powder and minuets. My version is Italian and whipped up with desperate passion!
The opera was a huge hit when it premiered in Turin in 1893, soon crowning Puccini as the new king of Italian opera, a throne left vacant when Verdi abdicated the same year with his final work Falstaff.
Photo: Toni Suter
As vocal favorites, this Zürich performance is especially tempting with the magnificent Russian soprano Elena Stikhina, flanked by the exciting Italian/Albanian tenor Saimur Pirgi.
Musically, Puccini’s dazzling composition is particularly noteworthy, alternating between poignant, sensitive atmospheric images in full orchestration and hit arias that clearly foreshadow the hits that would later follow in La Bohème, Madame Butterfly and Tosca.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
A Swiss reviewer next to me got really angry with Kosky’s ‘noisy’ stage direction in Act 2, and made to leave the theatre, but was held back by the Zurich Philharmonic’s excellent interpretation of Puccini’s music. A top-class experience.
Manon Lescault is about raging desire and two men fighting over the same woman.
The young student Des Grieux is after Manon’s heart but can’t deliver on finances. Manon soon throws herself into the arms of wealthy lecher Geronte, who can feed her all the oysters, vodka shots, diamonds and gold jeweler she expects in exchange for her love.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
The point is that Manon may have deserved her fate when, shortly before another escape with bags full of precious stones, she is arrested by the police for prostitution, imprisoned and deported to Louisiana/USA, where Des Grieux follows her in a gripping final act where the music almost runs away with it all. Wow!
Kosky’s staging is, as usual, of high visual quality and pursues a road movie concept, where the main characters are driven around the action in alternating horse-drawn carriages of clear social signaling value.
Photo: Monika Rittershaus
Most of the time surrounded by a large choir and a sea of extras in a carnivalesque dance macabre on the death march towards the end Manon must face as punishment for her untamed, materialistic desires.
An entertaining, spectacular take on Puccini that may have challenged puritanical critics but has earned five stars from GOT TO SEE THIS.
