MANON Comes to Paris Opera This Month

“Let us love, laugh and sing without end”, proclaims Manon, even more attracted by jewels and the easy life than by her love – however sincere – for the Chevalier des Grieux. If this opera, inspired by Abbé Prévost’s novel, is one of Jules Massenet’s most popular, it is because the drama is portrayed in a musical idiom as fertile as it is varied...

Alternating recitatives, musical forms reminiscent of the 18th century and grand lyrical or virtuoso arias (“Manon, sphynx étonnant”, “Je marche sur tous les chemins”), the score renews the conventions of “opéra-comique”.

Beyond the story of a passionate love affair, the work paints a picture of Regency-era morals just as it reflects those of the Third Republic – the period of Manon’s creation. This society of pleasure, painstakingly concealing brutality and sordidness, is also the society of the Roaring Twenties, the setting for Vincent Huguet’s production.