Met School Membership Program
Manon Lescaut
Teacher Study Guide
Metropolitan Opera Guild
Education Department
70 Lincoln Center Plaza
New York, NY 10023
www.operaed.org
Manon Lescaut
Production Information
Music: Giacomo Puccini
Libretto: Luigi Illica and others; based on the novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de
Manon Lescaut by Antoine-François Prévost
Timing:
1:00-3:00pm, three intermissions∗
Act I: 34 mins. Intermission 29 mins.
Act II: 41 mins. Intermission 25 mins.
Act III: 21 mins. Intermission 24 mins.
Act IV: 22 mins.
Cast:
Manon Lescaut
•
Il Cavaliere Renato des Grieux •
Lescaut
•
Geronte di Ravoir
•
Karita Mattila
Marcello Giordani
Dwayne Croft
Dale Travis
Conductor
Set Designer
Costume Designer
Lighting Designer
Stage Director
James Levine
Desmond Heeley
Desmond Heeley
Gil Wechsler
Gina Lapinski
•
•
•
•
•
Metropolitan Radio Broadcast: February 16, 2008 at 1:00-3:00 pm
(visit www.operainfo.org to find local broadcasting stations)
Special Thanks:
Lou Barrella, William C. Bassell, Judith Bouton, Joel Jay Brooks, Jonathan Dzik, Zeke
Hecker, Judith Kawalek, Joseph Materia, Mike Minard, Jim Tornatore, Suzi Zumpe,
Allison Kieckhefer, and Elise Figa
In addition, warm thanks to all MSM members who gave us insightful feedback about
the program. Your comments and materials have been instrumental in creating this
guide.
2
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Production Information
2
What is Opera and How Did it Come About?
4-6
The Composer: Giacomo Puccini
7
Background
Verismo
Puccini: The Young Composer
The Making of Manon Lescaut
8-13
8-9
10
11-13
Meet the Characters
14
The Story of Manon Lescaut
15-16
The Music of Manon Lescaut
17-19
Opera production: who’s who at the opera?
20-23
Introducing Your Students to Manon Lescaut
Approaching Opera In General
Approaching Manon Lescaut
Approaching the Music of Manon Lescaut
24-36
25-28
29-32
33-36
Using Manon Lescaut in Your Classroom
Music
English/Creative Writing
History/Humanities
Music
Research Ideas
Foreign Language (Italian)
Art/Design
37-60
38-47
48-51
52-53
54-55
56
57-58
59-60
Resources
Using Manon Lescaut to Teach Humanities, by Zeke Hecker
Libretto Translations
Opera News Articles:
“The Manon Variations” by Richard Lalli
“Friends and Rivals” by Mary Jane Phillips-Matz
Metropolitan Opera Facts
Glossary
61-73
62-70
71-73
3
74-75
76-80
81-82
83-85
What is opera?!
What is Opera? (or: Fat Ladies with Horns?)
Opera is the marriage of words, music, and images. Opera fuses all the arts—music,
drama, dance, design, painting, architecture, poetry, and literature—to tell timeless
stories. Stories about love, and death, vengeance, betrayal, heroism, sex, heartbreak,
murder, family, magic, and mystery.
Opera is a spectacular art form: it was Hollywood before there was a Hollywood. And
blockbuster movies still harken back to opera in their sound tracks, their over-the-top
stories, and their lavish production values. But while in a movie the picture onscreen
changes every few seconds, in an opera it is the music that is constantly shifting and
changing, letting you into the secret emotions of its characters, helping you to
understand meanings deep beneath its words and situations—and sometimes teaching
you truths that can’t be communicated in words. It’s all there if you know how to listen
for it.
A New World
Opera is exciting. The Met’s 2007-2008 opera season will star kings, rebels, bohemian
artists, forest witches, mythological creatures, genius servants, insane soldiers, merry
wives, courtesans; a bloody bride, a magical bird-man, a fiery Italian diva, a seductive
gypsy, an Egyptian princess, the Queen of the Night, Romeo and Juliet. Their stories
feature supernatural visions, murders, star-crossed lovers, black magic, intrigue,
suicide, revenge and retribution...and it’s all set to music so amazing that people have
been listening to it, crying and laughing to it, cherishing it, and singing it for centuries.
Opera can be portrayed as the exclusive domain of the rich and privileged: old, boring,
and hard to understand. So it’s easy to see why many people think opera is not for
them. If you are new to opera, it is tempting to jump on the bandwagon of viewing opera
as an outdated and irrelevant genre.
Abandon your preconceptions!
Opera is not about fat ladies with horns singing so loudly that they shatter wine glasses.
Opera isn’t old: stories like Manon Lescaut never get old. Opera isn’t hard to
understand. You just have to know how to listen. And once you get that, there’s a
chance that you could fall in love with it. Just give yourself a chance.
So identify the stereotypes about opera, see them for what they are, and try to approach
the art form with an open mind. You might not like it at all—but you might surprise
yourself.
4
How Did Opera Come About?
The invention of opera
Opera is a play in which the words are sung. It is different from other art forms,
because rather than developing gradually, opera was invented. Here’s how it
happened. In the town of Florence in Italy in the 1500s, a group of men, who were later
known as the Florentine Camerata, got together and decided to re-create the western
world’s first plays: ancient Greek dramas. They knew that the characters in the drama
sang or chanted their words and that there was a chorus whose role was to comment
on the action in the story. The sound of the Greek music had been lost, but the
Camerata didn’t let this put them off.
The Camerata were used to composing songs (arias) sharing characters’
with
audience
innerthe
feelings
withwas
the audience
audience, so that was no problem.
But they hit a snag when it came to moving the story
forward. Characters must do more than just sing elaborate
and beautiful songs to let the audience know how they are
feeling – they must also interact, fall in love, plot, and
fight. The Camerata were determined that Opera should
not be just a few songs linked together with spoken
dialogue, so, they invented recitative and with that, opera
was born. Recitative is what makes opera possible, as it
allows for everyday conversation to be sung. In arias, a short sentence is often
repeated over and over, with the emphasis being on the beauty of the song and often
the virtuosity of the singer. Recitative is more like an exaggerated way of speaking;
words tend not to be repeated, and characters imitate real conversation.
Opera spreads like wildfire across Europe
When opera was invented, no one had seen anything like it. It was so new and
spectacular that it was an instant hit. In the space of just twenty years, 35 opera houses
were built – and that was just in the town of Florence! Opera spread across Europe and
a composer called Mozart brought German into the previously Italian-dominated opera
scene. He wrote many operas in both German and Italian that are still extremely popular
because of their fast-moving plots, interesting stories, and stunning music.
Opera splits in two
During the late 1700s, opera broke into two genres: opera seria (grand, serious opera)
and opera buffa (comic opera). Opera buffa eventually evolved into operetta (eg,
Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado). Operetta is the predecessor of modern musical
theater, like today’s Broadway musicals.
Verdi and Wagner arrive on the scene
It wasn’t until the Romantic period (late 1700s to the early 1900s) that the image of the
fat, loud, opera-singing woman became associated with opera. In all the European arts,
5
a new spirit of emotionalism, rebellion, and high drama was flowered into the Romantic
movement. Not all of the Romantic composers wrote in such a dramatic style, but two
composers dominated the opera scene. They were Richard Wagner and Giuseppe
Verdi. The German, Wagner, broke away from the tradition of splitting operas into
recitatives and arias, and decided to write a particular fragment of music for each
character or theme (called a leitmotif) and weave these fragments together to help tell
the story of the drama. His operas are very complex and can be daunting even for the
most experienced opera lovers – partly because they are incredibly long. However,
those who rise to the challenge sometimes end up refusing to listen to anything else.
Wagner’s character Brünnhilde is the prototype for the famous fat lady with horns. Verdi
earned his reputation for excellence through his ability to fuse music and drama into a
single whole.
20th Century and Beyond
The works of Wagner and Verdi are sometimes viewed as being the supreme, most
celebrated accomplishments of composition possible in opera – why would anyone
bother to even try to write an opera after seeing
what these two men had accomplished? Two
bold, inspired composers of the late 19th century
decided it was their calling to see what else
could be done with opera. Richard Strauss
followed in Wagner’s footsteps in the celebrated
German tradition, creating operas that featured
huge orchestras, adventurous harmonies, and
libretti that were scandalous or intellectual—or both. Giacomo Puccini picked up where
Verdi left off, composing operas that featured gorgeous melodies, strong
characterizations, and crowd-pleasing, action-packed plots.
The 20th century saw operas composed in every style, from the blues-and-jazz inspired
Gershwin opera Porgy and Bess to the serial operas of Schöenberg and Berg. Opera
continues to evolve and grow, exploring new directions. New operas that recently
premiered at The Met include William Bolcom’s A View from the Bridge and John
Harbison’s The Great Gatsby.
Activities connected with this section
Have a look at the Brainstorm activity in Introducing Your Students to Manon Lescaut:
Approaching Opera in General.
You can turn to pages at the end of the present section for information on different voice
types, the conductor, the orchestra, acoustics and opera etiquette.
6
The composer: Giacomo Puccini (1858 – 1924)
A Musical Family
Giacomo Puccini was born in Lucca, Italy, and descended from
several generations of professional musicians. At first he was
not interested in carrying on the family tradition, but his mother
compelled him to study music. As a teenager he held down two
jobs as church organist. Drawn to gadgets and machinery, he
was intrigued by the organ and by the mechanics of music,
doodling and improvising during services. Several factors
combined to push him into a career as a composer: some
church pieces and a cantata he wrote enjoyed a favorable
reception; he heard Aida, the latest Verdi opera; and finally,
scholarships from a great-uncle and Queen Margherita of Savoy
enabled him to study at the Milan Conservatory from 1880-1883.
Giacomo Puccini
Exotic Compositions
Life in the big city never really agreed with Puccini, but it influenced his work. His
bohemian existence as a poor student later found expression in La Bohème. Though
loosely associated with the verismo movement, which strove to create more natural and
believable opera theater, Puccini did not hesitate to write period pieces or to exploit
exotic locales. In Tosca he wrote an intense melodrama set in Rome during Napoleonic
times. For Madama Butterfly he chose an American story set in Japan.
Staying with the Times…
Having enjoyed consistent acceptance up to that point in his career, Puccini was
completely unprepared for the total failure of Madama Butterfly when it was first
presented in 1904. But he had faith in the work and revised it until it was accepted. The
complications with Butterfly undermined his confidence and temporarily prevented him
from moving on to new projects. But later, during a visit to New York, he agreed to write
La Fanciulla del West, based on David Belasco's popular play The Girl of the Golden
West. Though reluctant to embrace "modernisms"—Strauss' Elektra confused and
repelled him—Puccini cautiously adapted to changing times in La Fanciulla, absorbing
the influence of Debussy's Pelléas, which he admired.
His Last Opera
A chain-smoker, Puccini developed throat cancer and was taken to Brussels in 1924 for
treatment by a specialist. Though the surgery was successful, Puccini's heart failed, and
he died shortly afterward. At the time of his death, he had been working on the most
ambitious of his operas, Turandot, based on Schiller's romantic adaptation of a fantasy
by Carlo Gozzi, the 18th-century Venetian satirist. In Turandot, Puccini wrote
extensively for the chorus for the first time, and he provided an enlarged, enriched
orchestral tapestry that showed an awareness of Stravinsky's Petrouchka and other
contemporary scores.
7
Background: Verismo
Verismo is the Italian term for realism. Realism was a primarily 19th century movement
that spanned all of the arts. Visual and performing arts alike developed a brand new
focus on document the real world of everyday people. Authors like Zola, Balzac, and
Tolstoy wrote stories about everyday life packed full of long, in-depth descriptive
passages. Painters developed techniques that created almost perfect illusions of
reality. And opera composers abandoned traditional tales of gods and kings in order to
put the real lives, cultures, and music of common people onstage. Instead of expensive
royal pageants, theaters produced picture-perfect peasant celebrations, turning their
focus from glitz to grit.
Why did verismo develop?
In the mid and late nineteenth century, Europe and
America were changing dramatically. The arrival of
the industrial revolution forever altered the landscape
of the west, shifted societies’ focus from the farm to
the factory, and made new mass-manufactured goods
available to anyone for the first time. The French
Revolution toppled France’s monarchy, and
Napoleon’s whirlwind transformed society throughout
Europe, leaving in its wake a newly centralized
government and free populations. As modern states
took hold throughout Europe, the trials of kings and
queens seemed less important than the issues facing
Liberty Leading the People,
ordinary people. Darwin’s The Origin of Species
A painting by Eugène Delacroix
turned traditional ideas about history, religion and
depicting the French Revolution of 1830.
biology on their heads. Technology was changing
rapidly; typewriters, telephones, electric lamps and moving pictures all appeared for the
first time within a space of roughly 15 years. The birth of first the camera obscura and
then photography in particular fueled a new public interest in the documentation of real
life. From Darwin to Marx, Balzac to Daguerre, artists and thinkers became fascinated
with the economic, biologic, psychological, historic processes at work beneath the
surface of reality.
Realism in Italy
Italy’s brand of realism, verismo had a special quality
because it was linked to the Risorgimento, the long,
drawn-out movement that eventually transformed Italy
from a patchwork of small city-states. Verdi, an Italian
patriot who passionately supported a unified Italy, had
to disguise his nationalist sentiments behind exotic
settings and opaque metaphors for much of his career.
Experiencing harsh censorship, he was forced to
substitute Duke for King, Boston or Biblical Israel for
Italy, medieval times for present day, etc. After Italy
A historic map of Italy
8
was unified, composers were finally allowed to create operas about their own land, time
and culture.
The music of verismo
Verismo was intended to pull no punches, exciting an audience’s sympathy and forcing
them to experience the emotions of the characters. Strict divisions between recitatives
and arias were eased, and composers gave equal attention to orchestral passages,
arias and scenes. Verismo composers did not use the coloratura their predecessors
loved so much: they preferred their characters to sing their melodies with huge, strong,
direct voices that communicated passion, not virtuosity. Italians also adopted the use of
orchestral motifs and used them as a tool to evoke the audience’s emotion and give the
piece unity and cohesion. Puccini composed a lush orchestral score for Manon
Lescaut, which added to the emotion and passion felt by the characters.
The Gleaners, 1857 by Jean François Millet
9
Puccini: The Young Composer
Before the premiere of Manon Lescaut in 1893, Puccini was a struggling composer who
had disappointed all the expectations his first opera excited. While his friends were
hailed as the saviors of Italian opera, Puccini toiled endlessly over a project that many
observers considered doomed: Manon Lescaut. Yet despite its difficult gestation,
Manon Lescaut would be Puccini’s greatest triumph, launching his incredible career and
setting the stage for his later masterpieces.
Young Puccini
Puccini’s first opera, Le Willis, was a romantic ghost story written for a one-act contest.
Le Willis didn’t place in the competition, but with the help of influential friends it was
performed. Italy’s most powerful music publisher, Ricordi, bought the opera and
encouraged Puccini to expand it into a two act, Le villi, which was performed in Turin in
1884 and at La Scala the following year. Impressed with Puccini’s potential, Ricordi
commissioned another opera, granting the young composer an allowance so he could
focus on his music.
The scene was set for Puccini to score a breakthrough success. He began work on a
new full-length opera, Edgar. Unfortunately, Puccini’s collaborator Fontana gave him a
ridiculous libretto, which was little more than a vapid pastiche of operas they both
admired. Meanwhile, Puccini’s life was thrown into turmoil when his only surviving
parent, his beloved mother, died. Soon after, Puccini fell in love with one of his piano
students, Elvira Geminiani, a married woman who abandoned her husband and brought
her child to live with Puccini. Elvira soon bore Puccini a son, Antonio. Money was tight,
and the relationship was not happy. Elvira proved to be jealous, demanding, and
narrow-minded. She and Puccini would make each other miserable for the rest of their
lives.
It took Puccini five long years to finish Edgar. When it finally premiered, the opera was a
dismal failure, withdrawn after three performances. Puccini was devastated. Ricordi
wrote to him: “Remember, Puccini, you are at the most difficult moment of your artistic
life . . . I will not allow you to stagnate . . . We must stop torturing ourselves, start
working and attempt to find a good subject and a good librettist.”
10
The Making of Manon Lescaut
A Tempting Subject
Puccini found that subject in a famous story of love and degradation, the tale of the
Chevalier Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut. Their story had originally appeared as one
volume in Abbé Prévost’s novel Memoirs of a Man of Quality who has Retired from the
World. Prévost’s novel drew on his own life experiences: he was driven into a
monastery by a failed love affair, became a priest, then fled his order and skipped
across Europe as a writer.
Today Prévost and his novel have faded into obscurity, but Manon permanently
captured the public’s imagination. Decades after Prévost’s death, she inspired the
creation of heroines like Rousseau’s Julie and Zola’s Nana. The most successful
operatic version of her story, Massenet’s wildly popular Manon, premiered in 1884—just
a few years before Puccini began work on his opera. It was bold, perhaps even rash, for
a young composer to challenge one of opera’s leading lights. But Puccini defended his
choice, famously saying, “Manon is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail
to win the hearts of the public. Why shouldn’t there be two operas about her? A woman
like Manon can have more than one lover.”
Manon’s Many Librettists
Puccini’s Edgar had been cursed by a botched libretto, so perhaps it’s no wonder that
the young composer’s expectations for Manon Lescaut’s libretto were sky-high.
Determined not to compromise, Puccini chewed up and spat out his collaborators at an
alarming rate.
Ricordi first asked composer Ruggero Leoncavallo to write the libretto, but Puccini
rejected his outline. Puccini’s friend Marco Praga, a playwright who had never written a
libretto, was next up to bat. He brought in a friend, poet Domenico Oliva, to help with the
verses. They completed a libretto, and Puccini set their first act to music, but soon the
composer hit on new ideas and demanded a fresh draft. Praga threw up his hands and
Leoncavallo became Oliva’s new collaborator. The new team redid the opera according
to Puccini’s ideas. Finally librettist Luigi Illica rewrote the libretto one last time. Even
Puccini and Ricordi contributed verses. When Manon Lescaut was finally finished, the
libretto was such a mishmash of various authors’ work that it was attributed to no one.
Puccini’s Manon
Why was the process of creating the libretto so difficult? Of course, it was vital that
Puccini differentiate his opera from Massenet’s Manon. Puccini had declared
“Massenet feels [the story] as a Frenchman, with the powder and minuettes. I shall feel
it as an Italian, with desperate passion.” But what did that mean in terms of scenario?
Puccini himself didn’t know, at least at first. Manon’s clear, logical libretto exerted a
11
powerful influence on Puccini’s collaborators, but Puccini himself was increasingly
drawn to parts of the story that Massenet never explored.
Perhaps the true source of Puccini’s misunderstandings with his librettists was Manon
herself. It’s often been observed that Puccini had to be in love with his heroines, and he
was crazy about Manon. Unfortunately for his collaborators, the Manon Puccini had
fallen in love with was not the girl created by Abbé Prévost or even by Massenet.
Prévost’s Manon is nothing if not fickle. Young, beautiful and willful, she truly loves Des
Grieux, but sees nothing wrong with taking money from other men. Des Grieux knows
she will leave him the moment he runs out of cash. To keep her happy, he becomes a
gambler, a debtor, a fugitive, and a thief. In return, she betrays him again and again.
She is self-centered, totally amoral, and so far from understanding her crimes that it is
difficult to condemn her. Only in the end, when Des Grieux follows her to the new world,
does she finally realize just how much she means to him. Ironically, it is in New Orleans,
where the lovers try to marry, that they are driven out into the desert where Manon dies.
Massenet created a less sordid story with a more appealing heroine. In his opera,
Manon really only betrays Des Grieux once, when she allows herself be seduced by the
wealthy de Bretigny. Des Grieux does not become a cheat or a murderer, and delicate
Manon never even makes it to Louisiana. However, she is still a temptress who at least
partially deserves her fate.
Puccini’s Manon is a totally different creature. She’s an innocent, beautiful child. Her
brother Lescaut is a sort of proto-Scarpia, a puppet master who manipulates the young
lovers for his own benefit. It is he who brings Manon to a wealthy lover’s house, and it is
he who turns Des Grieux into a gambler. Manon leaves Des Grieux reluctantly, and runs
back to him the first chance she gets, gleefully rejecting the rich Geronte. She’s barely
unfaithful at all!
Puccini doesn’t focus on Manon’s frivolity and greed, but on the sweetness of her young
passion, the unfairness of her deportation, the agony of her death in the desert. In short,
Puccini made Manon into the first of his tender, fragile, beautiful victims. And like her
younger sisters Mimì, Butterfly, Angelica and Liù, Puccini’s first love was doomed to a
slow, painful death.
Darkest Before the Dawn
As Manon Lescaut slowly evolved, Puccini’s chances of success seemed to be growing
more and more remote. He was so poor that considered giving up composition and
joining his brother Michele in South America. Meanwhile, Puccini’s friends were getting
famous. In 1890, his friend Mascagni rocketed to fame with his opera Cavalleria
Rusticana. In 1892, Leoncavallo scored a huge success with I Pagliacci. Ricordi’s
partners, frustrated with Puccini’s lack of output, were eager to cut off the young
composer’s salary. On the eve of Manon Lescaut’s premiere, Puccini was 31—past the
age when a success would be astonishing, and at the point when a success would be
necessary. If Manon Lescaut failed, Puccini’s career would be over.
12
Triumph
Manon Lescaut’s libretto was a shambles. The subject had already been treated by one
of the world’s most famous composers. The press still remembered the dismal failure of
Edgar. But the glory and power of Puccini’s music made Manon Lescaut a resounding
success.
Manon Lescaut is lyrical, melodic, inventive, and fresh. So many aspects of Puccini’s
mature work are already in evidence here: the rich orchestration, the recurring motifs,
the soaring duets, the pathos of a gentle dying girl who no one can ever bring back. The
ravishing music in which Manon clings to life, hoping for one more kiss from her lover,
dreaming of her misspent youth, devastated the audience.
All the critics agreed: Puccini was a genius, and Manon Lescaut was a masterpiece.
The fact that it premiered just a week before Verdi’s final opera, Falstaff, impressed
everyone. Distinguished playwright and critic George Bernard Shaw hailed Puccini as
Verdi’s most likely artistic heir.
Throughout his career, Puccini would keep returning to his favorite theme of “great
sorrows in little souls.” He would also continue to search desperately for stories—that is
to say, heroines—that appealed to him. As time went on, these searches became more
and more difficult, but Puccini’s music grew more and more glorious. In Manon Lescaut,
we hear the dawn of an astonishing career.
13
Meet the characters
Manon Lescaut / ma – naw leh-skoh/ (soprano) – The ill-fated heroine who is torn
between love and riches.
Il Cavaliere Renato des Grieux / eel kah-vah-lee-air reh-nah-toh deh gree-yuh /
(tenor) – A poor student who falls in love with Manon and stays faithful to her until her
death.
Lescaut/ leh – skoh/ (baritone) – Manon’s brother who pities her fateful situation.
Geronte di Ravoir/ jeh-ront di rah-vwah / (bass) – A wealthy Parisian, looking to take
Manon as his mistress.
Edmondo/ ed-mon-do / (tenor) – A student, friends with des Grieux, and tries to help
him win Manon.
Typical 19th century
French fashion.
Hint: Before introducing the story to your class, take a look
at the storytelling activity in Introducing Your Students to
Manon Lescaut: Approaching Opera in General.
14
The Story of Manon Lescaut
Love, Abduction and Escape!
Outside an inn at Amiens, around 1720. Edmondo, his
Act I
fellow students, and their girlfriends, amuse
themselves. When des Grieux appears, they taunt the
youth for his lack of success in love; he retorts with a teasing
serenade to the girls. Soon the courtyard stirs with the arrival of a
carriage bearing Manon and her brother, Lescaut, who is escorting the girl to a convent
at their father’s orders. Sharing the coach with them is the aging Geronte, a wealthy
Parisian gallant. While the Innkeeper shows Lescaut and Geronte to their quarters, des
Grieux introduces himself to Manon, but she is called away by her brother. The
Chevalier rhapsodizes on her beauty. Geronte, encouraged by Lescaut’s wordly
ambitions for Manon, bribes the Innkeeper to arrange for her abduction; overhearing the
plan, Edmondo alerts des Grieux.
A Secret Rendevous
As evening falls, Manon keeps a promise she made to meet des
Grieux, who persuades her to evade both the convent and her elderly
admirer by running off to Paris with him instead. Geronte returns to find
the young lovers escaping in the carriage he hired for himself and
Manon; furious, he is soon calmed by the tipsy Lescaut, who assures
him a girl who loves luxury will be easy to lure away from a poor
student.
For Love or For Money?
True to Lescaut’s prediction, Manon has abandoned des Grieux and is
installed in a sumptuous Paris apartment provided by Geronte. When
Act II
Lescaut calls to congratulate her on her success, she pensively replies
that luxury cannot make up for the loss of des Grieux. Her discontent is
not relieved by the arrival of musicians to sing a madrigal composed by Geronte, but
Manon’s vanity is aroused when some of her sponsor’s friends call to pay tribute to her
glamour. Geronte joins them in watching the girl’s dancing lesson. To the strains of a
minuet, she sings a song in praise of love. When Geronte and the admirers leave,
Manon is confronted by des Grieux, obligingly summoned by Lescaut to ease her
boredom. At first reproaching Manon as faithless, des Grieux soon gives in to
her beauty and her insistent declarations of true love. Just as the two
embrace, Geronte surprises them; when Manon holds up a mirror to
mock his age, he leaves in fury, hinting at prompt vengeance. Lescaut
bursts in to warn that police are on their way. Though des Grieux begs
her to escape with him at once, she tarries to gather up her jewels. The
delay proves disastrous; led in by Geronte, gendarmes drag the girl off
to prison as a thief.
15
Call the Prisoners!
On a street by the harbor of Le Havre, des Grieux and
Act III
Lescaut wait for the dawn, hoping to rescue Manon from
being deported as an undesirable. When she comes to the bars of her
prison, the lovers once again exchange vows but are interrupted by a
Lamplighter’s plaintive song. At the sound of a shot, Lescaut, running in
to warn that the plot to abduct Manon has been discovered, forces des Grieux to take
cover. Soon a band of soldiers leads in the women prisoners. As a Sergeant calls the
roll, they go on board ship, some defiant, some in tears. A curious crowd gathers and
comments. Manon sobs farewell to des Grieux, who in desperation begs the Ship’s
Captain to let him accompany Manon to the New World. Moved by his pleading, the
Captain agrees.
A Bitter End
Act IV
Wandering in a wasteland where they have fled after landing at New
Orleans, the weary, ailing Manon can go no farther and lies down to
rest. When des Grieux goes off in search of help, the girl is seized by terror and despair.
At his return, Manon, pledging eternal love, dies in his arms.
Activities connected to the plot and characters
Take a look at Introducing Your Students to Manon Lescaut: Approaching Opera in
General for activities related to the plot and characters of the opera. In particular:
• Motivation/Role Play Activity
• Storytelling
• Standing in the Character's Shoes
• Who am I?
• What Drives the Characters?
16
The Music of Manon Lescaut
Verismo
In the 1890s, an operatic style called verismo arose from a growing trend towards stark
realism in French painting and literature. Artists became increasingly interested in the
strenuous lives of the middle or lower-class, and attempted to recreate their struggles
accurately and objectively. The Italians caught on, and started writing plays depicting
the local customs and dialects, without sentimentality, of unsophisticated characters.
Soon, composers began to use these literary models as material for new verismo
operas– the first being Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana. The music of verismo opera is
as forthright as the libretto: direct and dramatic, they are uninterested in showy arias.
Puccini often wouldn’t write overtures, because
he felt that they were an unnatural ornament.
Staying true to himself and to the verismo
movement, Puccini wrote a short orchestral
introduction, but no long overture for Manon
Lescaut. The opera opens amid the every day
life of the common townspeople.
French women at a café
A Quick Change of Heart
Track 2 “Tra voi, belle, brune e bionde” (“Among you, beautiful, brown
haired and fair”)
Edmondo’s friend, Il Cavaliere Renato des Grieux, enters. Des Grieux
has never been in love, and sings jokingly with all the girls about finding
his true love among them. The bouncy music indicates a jovial and
carefree atmosphere of the simple folk. Listen to the strings accompany des Grieux in a
pizzicato—plucked—style. Pay special attention to the Italian: the choppy consonant
sounds indicate a lighthearted mood. Also listen to the other students laugh at des
Grieux as he sings.
Track 4 “Donna non vidi mai” (“Beautiful woman, never in my life”)
Meeting Manon inspires passion and love in des Grieux. Listen as this aria, full of
legato, or smooth and connected melodic accompaniment in the strings, portrays a
different side of des Grieux. Also, listen to des Grieux’s Italian: it is full of fluid vowel
sounds to indicate his romantic feelings towards Manon.
Motifs and Themes
Puccini uses musical motifs to represent characters in the opera. Sometimes, the
motifs are indicated by the text and singers, while other times, they are played only by
the orchestra.
Track 3 “Cortese damigella” (“Gentle Lady”)
Des Grieux and Manon speak to each other for the first time. Manon has her
own theme, which she sings to introduce herself to des Grieux. Listen to “Manon
Lescaut mi chiamo” (“Manon Lescaut is my name.”) This melody occurs many
17
times throughout the opera; sometimes only the first two notes are played in the
orchestra.
Track 4 “Donna non vidi mai” (“Beautiful woman, never in my life”)
Listen to des Grieux sing Manon’s theme two times within his aria once he falls deeply
in love with her. Can you also find Manon’s theme in the violins? It appears frequently
throughout the rest of the opera.
Love and Despair
Puccini displays the broad range of human emotions by composing sweeping melodies
and creating a lush orchestral texture. He heightens passion to an already gripping
libretto by doubling the vocal lines for more power, while a sparse orchestra—with only
high strings and woodwinds—displays quieter moments.
Track 5 “Vedete? Io son fedele” (“You see? I am faithful”)
This love duet is full of rising melodic lines that build towards the two lovers singing
together in unison. This melody climaxes to a sustained high B-flat at the very end. As
they sing, they both say “mio sospiro infinito!” (“my eternal dream!”) Throughout the
duet, listen for the legato ascending lines in the upper strings. Puccini uses this
orchestral technique to show the blossoming love between Manon and des Grieux.
Track 11 “Presto! In filla!...No! pazzo son” (“Quickly! In
line!...No! I am crazy!”)
The beginning of this piece is ominous and suspenseful. Des
Grieux is so distraught over Manon’s deportment that he pleads
with the captain of the ship to let him be a cabin boy on board.
Moved by his request, the captain agrees to let des Grieux work
on the boat. Listen for the triumphant orchestral reaction to des Grieux’s ‘good fortune.’
Foreshadowing
Track 9 “Intermezzo”
This purely orchestral track signifies Manon’s journey to Le
Havre, where she will board the ship to America. Listen to
the mournful melody in the strings. Most of the piece is in a
minor key, which usually sounds sad and solemn. Listen
closely to the very end of the piece: the descending triplet
motion in the upper woodwinds is played again later on in
“Sola, perduta, abbandonata” (Track 13).
Track 12 “Tutta su me ti posa” (“Lean all your weight on me”)
Finally in America, des Grieux and Manon sing a duet as they travel
the desert. Weary, thirsty and exhausted, they try to keep each other going, but Manon
18
is fading fast. The brass and percussion play a harsh and ominous motif in the
beginning that will repeat as the final sounds of the opera as Manon dies in the arms of
her love.
Track 13 “Sola, perduta, abbandonata/Alone, lost, abandoned”
This is Manon’s final aria, sung as she dies of thirst and exhaustion. The beginning is a
replicate of the end of the “Intermezzo,” with Manon on the way to Le Havre.
Track 14 “Fra le tue braccia amore” (“In your arms, love”)
Manon knows that she is going to die even as she and des Grieux sing this duet
together. She is passionate about her love for him, and wants to know that he is near
as she dies. Manon’s theme also plays in the orchestra in this duet. This time, however,
it is in a minor key.
Further Listening
If you are interested in hearing more examples of verismo in Puccini’s
famous opera, rent the full (2 CD set) version of the CD from the library.
Then pay special attention to these tracks:
“Che ceffi son costor?...Sulla vetta”
Local musicians have been called in by Geronte to Manon’s salon to entertain and
entice her with an original composition. This secular song, or madrigal, is sung by a
solo soprano and a chorus of women. The simple accompaniment that follows the
vocal lines very closely, along with a secular subject matter, is characteristic of Italian
madrigals.
“Rosetta!...Eh! Che aria!”
Manon’s name is called, among other abandoned
women, to board the ship headed for America.
There are many layers to this music. Sergeants are
calling names, townspeople are responding to the
action, and Manon and des Grieux are saying their
goodbyes. In order to set Manon and des Grieux’s
conversation apart from all the other action, Puccini
doubles their lines with the strings, which allows the
lovers’ melody to soar!
A ship from the 18th century
Activities connected to the Music of Manon Lescaut
Take a look at Introducing Your Students to Manon Lescaut: Approaching the Muisc of Manon
Lescaut for activities related to the music of the opera. In particular:
• Saturation Music
• Me the Conductor
• What the Music Tells Us
• Instant Volume!
19
Opera production: who’s who at the opera?
As guests in the Metropolitan Opera house, we are lucky enough to watch as the
art of hundreds of singers, musicians, dancers, actors, designers and
stagehands comes to life onstage. During your trip it is important to understand
and respect all the immensely hard work that goes into the production you are
watching.
Opera singers
What? No microphones?!
The Met auditorium is 72 ft tall, 100 ft wide and 230 ft wide. The auditorium
alone is like a seven-story building that covers one quarter of a city block. Opera
singers make themselves heard through the whole house, over a full orchestra –
without amplification. There are no microphones hidden in the set! Instead,
opera singers use their training and the acoustics of the building to project their
voices. In order to do this, opera singers train for longer than doctors. This is
partly because they are trying to isolate and train their vocal cords: a mechanism
about the size of your little finger nail. This is made doubly hard by the fact that
unlike other musicians, singers can’t see their instrument, so all of their learning
has to be by sensation.
Amazing feats of memory
Opera singers have to memorize several hours of music for each opera. Operas
are usually performed in the language in which they were written, which means
that opera singers must perform in – and understand – Italian, German, French,
Russian; even Czech!
Phew!
Opera singers do all of these things while they are onstage under hot lights,
performing blocking that can be awkward or difficult. Opera singers have to be
able to sing lying down, running, jumping, dancing and performing all kinds of
other tricky moves. Period costumes like hoop skirts, cloaks and corsets can
also be hot and uncomfortable.
Who sings what?
Here is a very rough guide to the different voice types, starting with the highest
(soprano), going right down to the very deepest (bass)
20
Soprano: Sopranos have the highest voices. They usually play the heroines of
an opera. This means they have lots of show-off arias to sing, and get to fall in
love and / or die more often than other female voice types.
Mezzo soprano, or mezzo: This is the middle female voice, and has a darker,
warmer sound than the soprano. Mezzos spend a lot of their time playing
mothers and villainesses, although sometimes they get to play seductive
heroines. Mezzos also play young men on occasion – these are called trouser
roles, for obvious reasons.
Contralto, or alto: The lowest female voice. Contralto is a rare voice type. Altos
usually portray older females or character parts like witches and old gypsies.
Counter tenor: Also known as alto, this is the highest male voice, and another
vocal rarity. Counter tenors sing with about the same range as a contralto.
Counter tenor roles are most common in baroque opera, but some more modern
composers write parts for counter tenors too.
Tenor: If there are no counter tenors on stage, then the highest male voice in
opera is tenor. Tenors are usually the heroes who get the girl or die horribly in
the attempt.
Baritone: The middle male voice. In comic opera, the baritone is often the
ringleader of whatever naughtiness is going on, but in tragic opera, he’s more
likely to play the villain.
Bass: The lowest male voice. Low voices usually suggest age and wisdom in
serious opera, and basses usually play Kings, fathers, and grandfathers. In
comic opera basses often portray old characters that are foolish or laughable.
The conductor
The conductor is in charge of keeping the orchestra and all the singers together.
He or she decides on the speed (tempo) for the music and decides which parts of
the music to emphasize and bring out. It’s also the conductor’s job to achieve
the right balance of sound, making sure that the singer can be heard above the
orchestra. The conductor keeps time throughout the opera and has the last word
on all questions of musical interpretation.
The orchestra
The orchestra plays the music of the opera in the pit. As a general rule of thumb,
orchestras are divided into the following sections:
Strings: including violins, violas, cellos, double bass
Woodwind: including oboe, clarinet, flute, piccolo and bassoon
Brass: including trumpets, trombones, french horns and tubas
Percussion: including timpani, bass drum, xylophone, bells, gong, triangle and
piano
21
Often opera orchestras include special effects specific to the opera being
performed. Sometimes you can see unusual instruments in the pit. Some that
have been used at the Met in recent years are airplane propellers, type writers,
and guillotines!
The chorus
Most operas have a chorus. The chorus at the Met has to learn large chunks of
music for each opera, and sometimes perform in several different operas a week!
In each opera, chorus members have to remember just as much as the soloists –
it’s just that they sing together rather than on their own.
The audience
Last, but my no means least, are the audience. Hundreds of artists work every
day just to produce spectacular, beautiful, exciting opera for their audiences.
You can show that you appreciate their hard work (whether you like the opera or
not!) with your applause – and with your politeness during the performance.
Being quiet during the opera is not only polite to the performers – it’s a gift to
your fellow audience members, and it means you won’t miss any of the action.
Hurray! Bravo!
Opera is all about extremes and this extends to the audience too. Although you
should be as quiet as a mouse during all the action, there are points at which you
can clap and yell ‘bravo’ at the top of your voice. Here are some guidelines:
•
•
•
•
Definitely clap when the conductor comes out to his podium (but not while the
orchestra is tuning up!)
Clap when the curtain comes down and when performers take a bow
You can also applaud if the conductor stops the orchestra for applause after
an aria – but it’s always rude to applaud over the orchestra!
If you really love a particular singer’s performance, by all means yell at them.
You yell ’bravo’ to a man, or ‘brava’ to a woman. This lets singers know that
you especially loved their performance.
Absolutely NO whispering during the performance!
There is no whispering or talking allowed inside the opera house. This means
not to discuss the opera, not when the orchestra gets loud; not even to ask to
borrow binoculars.
Part of the reason that we, the audience, can hear opera singers so clearly
without microphones is that the Met Opera House has incredible acoustics. This
means that when sound comes from the stage, it bounces around the house and
reaches your ears without getting lost in dead space. In other words, the house
itself is a huge echoing tunnel that amplifies sound. In the same way as you can
22
hear everything that the orchestra and singers perform, they can hear every
whisper, candy wrapper, and cough in the audience very, very clearly. It is a fact
that if you stand on stage at the Met, you can hear anyone at the back of the
audience whisper!
Acoustics at the Met: Did you know...
• There are no hard corners in the Met opera house. Hard corners eat up
sound, whereas the curved surfaces at the Met reflect sound back to the
audience, so that none is lost in transit.
• Even the chandeliers at the Met are designed to bounce sound back towards
the audience!
• All of the wood veneer in the Met auditorium comes from a single African
rosewood tree. This means that all of the wood resonates at exactly the
same frequency, amplifying sound. It’s as if the auditorium itself is a huge
musical instrument!
Quick checklist for enjoying opera
Before the show:
• Read the story
• Work out how long the opera is
• Turn your cell phone off – along with anything else that might beep
• Have some food
During the show:
• No snacks, food, gum, or drinks allowed inside the auditorium
• No eating, chewing gum or drinking during the performance
• No cell phones, beeping watches, radios, cassette recorders or cameras
• No feet on seats of railings
• No clapping out of turn
At the end of the show:
• Clap as much as you like and yell bravo at your favorite singer!
Activities connected to this section
Take a look at Introducing Your Students to Manon Lescaut: Approaching Opera
in General for activities related understanding opera production. In particular:
• Brainstorm
• Company Warm Up
• Ring the Changes
• Peter Brook Opera Game
• Cast Your Own Opera
23
Introducing Your
Students to
Manon Lescaut
Approaching Opera in General
•
•
•
•
•
Brainstorm
Company Warm Up
Ring the Changes
Peter Brook Opera Game
Cast Your Own Opera
Approaching Manon Lescaut
•
•
•
•
•
•
Motivation/Role Play Activity
Storytelling
Standing in the Character's Shoes
Who Am I?
What Drives the Characters?
Situation Monologue Aria
Approaching the Music of Manon Lescaut
•
•
•
•
•
Saturation Music
What the Music Tells Us
Me the Conductor
Instant Volume
Update the Genre
24
Approaching Opera in General
Brainstorm!
1
first steps
hands on
Time required: at least 10 minutes
Resources required: 5 or 6 large sheets of paper and fat felt
tip pens
Purpose: To explode opera myths!
If opera is a new experience for your class, brainstorming can be a nice way to
introduce them to it. Split your class into 5 or 6 groups, with a large sheet of
paper per group. In their groups, have them write all the words they can think of
associated with the word ‘opera’ for 5 minutes – or longer as per the needs of the
group – (i.e. Screamy singing, Viking helmets, fat ladies, shattering glass etc).
When the time’s up, have them walk around the room looking at what other
groups have written. Initiate a discussion to dispel any “opera stereotypes” and
introduce students to the real world of opera.
Extensions of this Activity:
• Discuss why the Camerata wanted to make a play that was entirely sung. If
you sing in daily life, when? While you’re washing up? In the bath? When
you’re happy?
• Discuss how opera singers’ voices are not amplified and how singers must
project (see ‘Opera Production – Who’s Who at the Opera’)
• Discuss the typical roles for different voice parts - i.e. Soprano is often the
heroine, bass is often evil (see ‘Opera Production – Who’s Who at the
Opera). Play examples of the different voices to the class
• You could also brainstorm with your students about what an orchestra is.
• Introduce them to opera vocabulary (see Glossary in Resources Section)
Company Warm Up
Time required: 10- 15 minutes
hands on
Resources required: none
Purpose: To increase energy levels and engage your students.
Students new to opera can be shy or doubtful about it. One way to get students
energized and enthusiastic is to lead them in a brief group warm up. Explain that
25
the group warm up is similar to what an opera’s cast / chorus will do before they
come on stage, so your class can become an opera company for the lesson!
•
•
•
•
•
If you have space, have the class stand in a circle, otherwise just find a space
in the room, but make sure all the class have a clear line of vision to you.
Start with a copying exercise. Teacher initiates movements and the class
copy these, being as quick on the uptake as possible. Make these
movements as bold and as physical as possible, i.e. - Drumming hands on thighs
- Shaking hands out above head
- Standing on one leg, shaking the other
- Crouching low and drumming fingers on floor
- Star jumps
Following the teacher, see if it’s possible to clap as a group all at the same
time with no stragglers.
Then try this with no ‘leader’
See if the group can maintain its unison movements without any leader - i.e.
see what type of movements happen when everyone is following each other.
Ring the Changes
Time required: 10 minutes
Resources required: none
Purpose: To understand how our voices can convey our emotions and to discover the differences and similarities between
hands on
speaking and singing
Pick volunteers from your class to say the sentence:
‘I don’t want to be at school today’
or in fact any sentence you choose. Play with different ways of saying the
sentence. Have the students notice what it is that changes with each variation;
Pitch? Volume?
How does it change if you pretend:
• you are happy?
• you are telling someone a guilty secret?
• you are upset?
• you are jealous? etc. Be bold!
Discuss how big a leap there is from what the students are doing with their
voices now, and singing.
26
The Peter Brook Opera Game
Time required: 15+ minutes
Resources required: none
hands on
Purpose: To discover what it feels like to be an opera
singer
English director, Peter Brook, famous for his theatre and opera productions
worldwide, developed this game to help actors and young singers understand the
many tasks opera singers must perform at once.
• Pick four students: an ‘opera singer’ and three assistants (A, B and C)
• The opera singer and A should face each other. A will make a series of
simple movements, which the opera singer should mimic as closely as
possible, being A’s mirror
• B is responsible for asking the opera singer simple mathematical equations.
The opera singer must answer these, while still mirroring A
• C is responsible for asking the opera singer a series of personal questions
(what’s your favorite place, favorite color, etc). The opera singer must answer
questions from B and C, whilst being A’s mirror
This game gives students a taste of what it’s like for opera singers to follow
blocking (physical movement), sing music (math) and make artistic and
emotional decisions (personal questions) all at the same time.
Things to watch out for:
• B and C have a tendency to become very polite, alternating questions. Have
them try different ways of asking the questions. They should repeat them if
they are not receiving answers!
• The opera singer will find it easier to follow A if looking directly into A’s eyes,
allowing the movements to be in their peripheral vision.
• A’s movements should be smooth and slow – the aim is to allow the opera
singer to follow, not to make them mess up!
Cast Your Own Opera
classroom
Resources required: Definitions of voice types on page 12
Purpose: To make the opera more immediate; To understand and
apply music vocabulary
Based on an activity by Jim Tornatore, Howell Road Elementary School
27
Have a look at the definitions of voice types in the section entitled “Opera
Production: Who’s Who at the Opera.” Bearing these definitions in mind, take an
established television show, like Friends, The Simpsons, or Seinfeld, and cast it
as an opera – what kind of voice types would you choose for each part, and
why? Alternatively, you could use a folk tale or fairy tale as the basis for this
activity.
28
Approaching Manon Lescaut
If you usually read the synopsis aloud to your class, the following two
activities are good to do BEFORE that. It will be useful if students have
already looked at some of the background information provided.
Motivation / Role Play Activity
1
first steps
classroom
Resources required: None
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and
their dilemmas
Based on a technique and ideas by MSM Master Teacher Jonathan Dzik
Motivations:
Present the following situations to your students:
1) You have a choice to be with either a wealthy man or woman whom you do
not love and who is quite a bit older, or a man or woman your age who is poor
and whom you love deeply. Whom would you choose and why? This can be a
written assignment or an oral discussion. (This is the situation in which Manon
finds herself at the end of Act II, the turning point in the opera, when Geronte, her
elderly companion, has sent for the police to arrest her. Her lover, des Grieux,
begs her to flee immediately, but she is concerned with gathering as much
jewelry as she can, losing valuable time. By the time she is ready to leave, the
police have arrived to arrest her.)
2) Present the following situation to the students: Your boyfriend or girlfriend is
about to be deported by ship to another country. You cannot bear to be without
him or her. You are poor, but are desperate to join him or her. What could you
say to the captain of the ship to allow you on board to join your friend? Make
this plea as convincing and emotional as possible to convince the captain to
allow you aboard. (This relates to the scene in Act III where Manon is being
deported by ship to Louisiana. Penniless, des Grieux makes an impassioned
plea to the captain to allow him on board the ship to join Manon.)
29
Storytelling
1
first steps
•
•
•
•
•
•
classroom
Resources required: ‘Meet the Characters’ and ‘The Story of
Manon Lescaut’ from this guide.
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and
their dilemmas; To become familiar with story construction.
Introduce the main characters
Have the students to whom you have assigned characters sit or stand in
relation to their character’s relationships; have the students themselves
guess what relationships exist between the characters based on what they
know already.
Ask the class what they think will happen when these characters meet?
How will what one character wants affect the fate of another? (This could
be a discussion, or you could ask them to write down what they think the
story will be.)
Use the students’ ideas to introduce the full synopsis.
Stop at crucial turning points in the plot and ask the students what they
think happens next. See if any students can guess what will happen to the
characters.
Some teachers choose to not give away the end of the opera; they feel
that this keeps the students engaged when they actually watch the opera.
Standing in the Characters’ Shoes
project idea
•
classroom
Resources required: none
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and
their dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To
develop creative writing skills
This activity is for further exploration of the story from the characters’
perspective. Have the students choose a character. Have them tell (or
write!) the story of the opera from their chosen character’s point of view,
using personal pronouns. (i.e: “I am a sergeant who is supposed to keep a
careful watch on my younger sister.”)
30
Who Am I?
Time required: 15+ minutes
Resources required: none
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their
dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera
hands on
After reviewing the story of the opera, have students select a character from the
opera, or assign one to them individually. Use the cast list to ensure that lesser
characters are also represented.
Everyone should find a space in the room and close their eyes. Ask students
questions, which they are to answer silently in their head, not out loud:
• Are you happy?
• How old are you?
• Are you in love?
• When was the last time you cried?
• What’s your favorite food?
• What do you want more than anything else?
• What is standing in your way?
• What are you going to do to get it?
Have students walk around the room, expressing their character by their posture
and movements, gestures, facial expressions. Have students improvise scenes
in character. Scenes need not end as they do in the actual opera, and could
involve characters meeting who do not meet in the actual plot.
What Drives the Characters?
Resources required: ‘Meet the characters’ and ‘The story of Manon
Lescaut’ from this guide.
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their
dilemmas; To develop critical thinking skills through character analysis
classroom
Manon
Manon is a young girl forced to decide between love and money.
•
•
•
•
Why does Manon agree to meet with des Grieux?
Does Manon truly love des Grieux? Why does she live with Geronte?
What would have happened if Manon chose Geronte? Would she have
been happier or not?
Why did Manon delay her escape with des Grieux to get the jewels? What
does that say about her character?
31
Lescaut
Lescaut is a sergeant who is placed in charge of his sister’s care.
• Why doesn’t Lescaut keep a more watchful eye on his sister?
• Why doesn’t Lescaut follow through with taking Manon to the convent?
• Does Lescaut believe that Manon is really in love with des Grieux?
• How does Lescaut feel about his sister’s deportment?
des Grieux
Des Grieux is a poor student desperately in love with Manon, and remains
devoted to her until the very end.
• What compelled des Grieux to talk to Manon in the first place?
• Why does des Grieux come back to Manon after she has been living with
Geronte?
• Why does des Grieux want to go to America with Manon? What does he
think his life will be like once he’s there?
• What is going to happen to des Grieux after Manon dies?
Situation Monologue Aria
1
first steps
•
•
•
•
classroom
Resources required: CD provided
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and
their dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To
familiarize your students with the music; To develop creative
writing skills; To develop composition skills
Before playing any of the music from the opera for your students, present
them with a situation from the plot of the opera (for example: Manon is being
deported to America, and des Grieux expresses his bitter anguish at the loss
of his love.) Ask them to imagine how that character feels.
Have students write monologues about this situation from the perspective of
the character. (For instance, have students choose a character to write their
own monologue for. Pick either the woman who will be sent away from her
country, or the man distraught by being separated from his love, most likely
forever.) These monologues can be written in prose.
Once students have written their monologues, consider choosing four or five
sentences which clearly display the emotional journey of their character. Try
setting them to music as an aria. Try to paint the words with the music,
making the music sound how the words feel. You might consider using simple
percussion instruments or other noisemakers.
Then listen to the duet from the opera, following along with the libretto.
Compare students' decisions with those made by Puccini.
32
Approaching the Music
Also see ‘The Music of Manon Lescaut’ from the previous section of this
guide.
Saturation Music
1
first steps
Resources: CD of the opera
Purpose: To familiarize your students with the music
classroom
From an activity by Lou Barella, Brooklyn High School for Arts and Music
Some time before you begin preparing your students to see Manon Lescaut, play
the music of the love duet between Manon and des Grieux (Track 3) as often as
you can: in the background while students are entering the classroom, while they
are leaving class, etc. Refuse to answer questions about the music: instead, ask
the students to guess what they think the music might be. You will pique their
interest. Later, when you introduce the music, they will recognize it and be better
able to hear and think about it.
What the Music Tells Us
1
first steps
classroom
Resources required: Blackboard / whiteboard, recording of
the opera
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and
their dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To
develop critical listening skills and respond creatively to music
Based on an activity by Mike Minard, A MacArthur Barr Middle School
•
Before introducing the story of characters of the opera to your students, Pose
this question on the board:
'If this piece of music were a person, what would the person be like?'
Then play excerpts from:
Des Grieux’s aria (Track 4)
Manon’s final aria (Track 13)
While your students are listening to each excerpt, they should write every
adjective that comes to mind that describes the music, and personifies the
sound. The words are then offered by the class and written on the board.
33
•
Use the students’ descriptions to introduce the premise of the opera, and the
characters: des Grieux and Manon:
•
How is des Grieux’s music different from Manon’s? Are their vocal
lines the same, or different? What about the rhythm of their music?
Melody? Orchestration?
•
What do these musical differences tell us about the differences
between the two characters?
Extensions of this Activity:
• Play the excerpts for your students again. What do they think is the
setting? What’s the story? Ask them to justify their guesses.
•
Use the students’ guesses to introduce the story of Manon Lescaut.
Then, listen to the music a final time, following along with the
translations provided in the back of this book.
Me the Conductor
Time required: 10 minutes
hands on
Resources required: none
Purpose: To understand what it feels like to be a conductor leading
the group / a singer following a conductor
Start by leading this exercise yourself. Once the rules are understood, students
can volunteer to take turns leading it.
• Have the students say the word ‘SING’, being sure to elongate the ‘NG’ at the
end; ‘SINGGGGGGGGGG’
• Take the ‘s’ off; ‘INGGGGGGGGG’
• Take the ‘i’ off; ‘NGGGGGGGGG’
• Using this ‘ng’ sound, explore sliding up and down through range; keep the
sound thin and small and make sure students don’t blurt / splurge air when
they are higher in their range
• Have kids echo the movement of their voices with their hands, drawing the
shape of the sounds they are making in the air
• Now lead them yourself; you are the conductor and they are the chorus. The
arc of your hand and arm movements will relate to the pitch of their sound. In
addition, explain that when your hand is open, the sound should be loud and
open into an ‘ah’ vowel, when your fingers are close together the sound
should remain soft on ‘ng’
• Once everyone is clear on the rules, have students volunteer to ‘conduct’ the
group. The more expansive their gestures, the more responsive the group
34
•
will be. Have each student decide on a signal to bring the sound to a stop as
together as possible.
Ask the ‘chorus’ who were being conducted for feedback about what worked
and what didn’t.
Instant Volume!
Time required: 5 minutes
hands on
•
•
•
•
•
Resources required: none
Purpose: If you are going to approach singing, this is an excellent
activity to increase the volume and confidence of the group.
Gather the group in close near the center of the room so that they are in a
tight bunch around you and ask someone for a word (any word, but nonsense
words are particularly good – i.e. ‘wibble wobble’)
First all whisper the word, then take a tiny step back
speak word in a normal voice and take another step back
Shout the word and step back again (taking care of each other’s toes!)
Sing the word to any notes you like, the bolder and more outrageous, the
better.
Variation 1: Try the same exercise with character names, exaggerating
pronunciation as much as possible,
Variation 2: Try the same exercise but adding different emotional states, eg.
pretending that the word / name is the most exciting news in the world, or that it
is terrifying; the stakes should get higher with each step back.
Update the Genre
Resources: Text below
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their
dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To become familiar
classroom
with story and dramatic construction; To respond imaginatively to the
opera’s expressive qualities; To guide students’ experience of the opera by
listening critically; To make connections to another historical era
Pose this question to your students: if you were Puccini composing Manon
Lescaut for the first time today, what type of music would you use for each of the
characters?
Have your students pick a contemporary musical genre for each of the stories
(i.e. techno music for des Grieux, etc.) They should justify their choices.
35
You may want to ask students to compose a new version of one of this opera’s
famous arias (such as Manon’s final aria, or des Grieux’s aria of love) in a
contemporary musical style.
36
Using
Manon Lescaut
In Your Classroom
Music
•
Using Manon Lescaut to teach Music, by Jonathan Dzik
English / Creative Writing
•
•
•
•
•
•
Modern Adaptation
Character Exploration
Themes
What If?
Rewrite the Scene
Opera Review
History / Humanities
•
•
•
•
Create an In-House Study Guide
The World of the Opera
Sponsorship
Research ideas
Foreign Language (Italian)
•
•
•
•
Translation
Character Study in German
Italian Drama
Italian Update
Art / Design
•
•
•
Costume Design
Set and Lighting Design
Commercial
37
Music
HINT: In addition to the information by Jonathan Dzik provided in this
section, see also previous section: 'Introducing Your Students to Manon
Lescaut: Approaching the Music of Manon Lescaut.
Using Fidelio to Teach Music
by Jonathan Dzik
Important Musical Motifs: In Manon Lescaut Puccini often makes use of
important musical motifs, giving a very precise identity to a musical idea
associated with a character or situation. Like Wagner, who specialized in this
technique, Puccini varied his motifs rhythmically, harmonically and through
different orchestrations. Unlike Wagner, however, Puccini emphasized melody
above all.
The opera opens outside an inn in Amiens, France with the following catchy motif
(Ex. #1a). This is a light scherzo in 3/4 time and creates the jovial mood of a
bustling public scene.
This jovial motif which recurs numerous times throughout Act I, is contrasted with
a more lyrical motif (Ex. #1b). Students are teasing the hero of our drama,
Chevalier Des Grieux, as they mockingly call out, “Perhaps you are consumed by
a violent love for some unapproachable lady.”
In response, Des Grieux sings the aria, “Tra voi belle” (“Amongst you, lovely
ones”), a lyrical outpouring of lighthearted love (Ex. #2). Des Grieux responds
with is, “Is there hiding among you a graceful and charming young girl who waits
for me?” At the conclusion of the aria, the students both applaud and laugh at
38
him as the jovial motif (Ex. #1a) returns. The opening melody of this aria will
recur at key points in Act I, and it will ultimately form the leading melody of the
ensemble that ends the act.
A post horn signals the arrival of a carriage bearing Manon and her brother
Lescaut, who is escorting her to a convent by orders from their father. Also
sharing the coach with them is Geronte de Ravoir, her elderly, wealthy suitor. As
they alight from the coach, we hear an anticipatory fragment of the most
important motif of the opera (Ex. #3a).
While an innkeeper shows Lescaut and Geronte to their quarters, Des Grieux
introduces himself to Manon saying, “Gentle lady, accept my prayer: let those
sweet lips tell me your name.” She responds with her signature motif, “Manon
Lescaut mi chiamo” (“I am called Manon Lescaut”). Note how the Italian words so
perfectly fit the seven notes of the melody (Ex. #3b).
Des Grieux tells her his name, and they make plans to meet again later that
evening. When Des Grieux sings his most famous aria, “Donna non vidi mai” (“I
never before beheld”), he is already madly in love with Manon (Ex. #4). Twice in
the aria he repeats her signature motif, as though intoxicated by the sound of her
name (Ex. #3b). During his conversation with Manon, snippets of the opera’s
open jovial music (Ex. #1a) have crept under the dialogue, indicating the
eavesdropping of Edmondo and the students. Now that motif emerges more
distinctly as the students make it clear that they are aware of his recent good
fortune.
39
A new theme emerges in the orchestra, forcefully played in unison (Ex. #5a). It is
in 3/8 time, but the accents on the first and third beats of the first measure give it
a duple meter feel, creating a hemiola effect. (A hemiola refers to the use of three
notes of equal value in the time normally occupied by two notes of equal value.)
This motif provides a backdrop to a conversation between Geronte and Lescaut.
Geronte discovers that Manon is on her way to a convent, so while Lescaut is
distracted in a card game, Geronte makes plans to abduct her. The motif occurs
three more times in a minor key and then it modulates into a major key (Ex. #5b)
and is soon altered rhythmically, inverted (Ex. #5c) and repeated in its various
permutations. During these repetitions Geronte bribes the innkeeper to arrange
for Manon’s abduction, but one of the students, Edmondo, overhears the plan
and warns Des Grieux. The crowd disperses and, as promised, Manon appears.
The orchestra repeats the motifs of Des Grieux’s aria (Ex. #4) and Manon’s
name (Ex. #3b).
A new motif, first heard in the orchestra, and later vocalized, appears (Ex. #6a).
This motif will become the germinating melodic theme of the burgeoning love
40
duet. Most notable is the upbeat tied note into the first full measure. This
syncopation creates a kind of breathless impetuosity.
Soon Des Grieux soars out with this lush ascending melody (Ex. #6b) and as the
duet progresses, both he and Manon sing it in unison (Ex. #6c), climaxing on a
sustained high B flat—the two of them clearly madly in love.
Des Grieux impulsively implores Manon to flee with him to Paris in the coach that
Geronte has arranged for himself, as the orchestra peels out fortissimo (Ex. #6d)
with a final statement of the love theme.
The stage then fills with a crowd of townsfolk and students. A massive ensemble
whose main theme is Des Grieux’s earlier light-hearted song (Ex. #2) becomes
41
the finale of Act I. During this ensemble, Geronte discovers that the two lovers
have escaped in the coach that he had prepared for his own abduction of Manon.
But he is calmed by Lescaut, who assures him that his sister, who loves luxury,
will not last long with a poor student. The two men go into the inn as the chorus
mocks the fortune of the old man. A brief orchestral flourish of sixteenth notes, in
the same mood as the opening of the opera brings down the Act I curtain.
Between Acts I and II, Manon has already lived with Des Grieux for awhile, but
as expected, she has abandoned her impoverished lover. As Act II opens,
Manon is living in a luxurious apartment in Paris supported by Geronte. When
Lescaut calls on her, she tells him that richness and jewels cannot make up for
the loss of Des Grieux. After various interludes where a group sings her a
madrigal and she takes a dancing lesson, we hear a sudden utterance of the first
two notes of Ex. #3b (Manon’s signature motif) indicating Des Grieux’s sudden
appearance. There is also a recollection of Des Grieux’s aria (Ex. #4) and of their
love duet from Act I (Ex. #6a). All of these melodic restatements signify a
reconciliation between the two lovers. She realizes that her new life in luxury has
been false and superficial.
A new love theme emerges (Ex. #7). Marked con espressione, the orchestra
doubles the vocal melodic line for emphasis. It is an angular melody with wide
leaps. Soon Des Grieux joins in the duet. The music rises in chromatic
sequences, almost Wagnerian, in its restless, delayed harmonic resolution.
An important new theme is sung by Des Grieux as he anticipates future bliss with
his beloved Manon (Ex. #8a). Triplets in almost every measure give a restless
urgency to their outpourings of love.
42
Manon joins in unison with him, and their ecstatic phrases are repeated a third
higher (see bars 3 and 4 of Ex. #8b) as their voices soar ever upward, with the
orchestra constantly doubling the vocal line for emphasis.
But their bliss is short-lived as an ominous new theme is heard (Ex. #9): a
sequence of ascending melodic fifths and fourths, powerful melodic intervals,
especially when stated in unison. This theme becomes the subject of a later
fugato section (to be discussed in the second part of this study guide). The music
denotes the approach of Geronte who is destined to thwart the lovers’ plans.
There is an orchestral intermezzo, a musical interlude, between Acts II and III
entitled, “The Imprisonment—The Journey to Le Havre.” Puccini provides a quote
from the original novel by Abbe Prevost.
"Des Grieux: How I love her! My passion is so ardent that I feel I am the most
unhappy creature alive. What have I not tried in Paris to obtain her release!...I
have implored the aid of the powerful! I have knocked at every door as a
supplicant! I have even resorted to force! All has been in vain. Only one thing
remains for me and that is to follow her! Go where she may!...Even to the end of
the world!"
A fragment of Manon’s signature theme (Ex. #3a), chromatically harmonized,
establishes the mood of helpless grief (Ex. #10) The rest of the intermezzo
recalls themes from the Act II duet of Manon and Des Grieux, especially Ex. #7.
43
Here, this impetuous love music is expanded through chromatic rising of pitch,
heightening the tension with triplets tied over the bar line (Ex. #11). Many
sequences add a powerful urgency to the mood, working up to a powerful climax.
The intermezzo concludes on a note of quiet resolve, recalling Des Grieux’s
anticipation of future bliss (Ex. #8a). Puccini gives the listener hope for a positive
outcome.
Delay, Declaration and Denouement
Delay: The turning point of the opera takes place near the end of Act II. Manon
has been ensconced in the luxurious surroundings of Geronte’s Paris home. But
she is bored by all of this superficial elegance, and she longs for her lover Des
Grieux. When Des Grieux does appear, he is in despair over Manon’s obsession
with wealth. He expresses his resentment in an emotional outpouring, “Your
foolish thoughts betray me” (Ex. #12a). His first three notes, a descending perfect
fourth and back again, are rendered more powerful by its doubling in the timpani.
Repeated a fourth higher—“I, your slave and your victim”—we hear his intense
bitterness on what Manon has become (Ex #12b). This three-note motif is
repeated yet one more time, back in the lower key and a bit more subdued, “In
the dark future…what will you make of me?”
44
The theme in example #9 returns in a traditional fugal exposition, with four
entrances of the subject. After the initial statement, the theme is imitated at the
interval of a fourth below, then at the octave below, and finally a fourth below
that, in classical fugal structure. This contrapuntal device sends Act II into its
frenzied finale.
Things happen quickly. Des Grieux is surprised at the sudden appearance of
Lescaut, who warns the lovers to flee, for Geronte has sent for the police, who
are now approaching. Every recurrence of the fugue motif seems to bring the
imminent danger closer and closer. The music is in a “hurry-up” 6/8 meter.
Though Des Grieux implores Manon to escape with him immediately, she makes
a fatal error. She gathers up as many jewels and trinkets as she can before
leaving. Des Grieux begs her to bring only her heart. The delay proves
disastrous. At that moment, Geronte and a number of soldiers burst into the
room. Panic-stricken, Manon drops the cloak where she has gathered the jewels,
scattering them to the floor. Geronte laughs triumphantly as the police take
Manon away as a common thief. Des Grieux brandishes his sword, but Lescaut
warns him that the only way he can save Manon is if he remains free. In despair,
Des Grieux calls out Manon’s name (Ex. #13). The music, heretofore in 6/8,
changes to 2/4, condensing the fugato theme (Ex. #9) into a powerful peroration
of the disaster which has just occurred.
Declaration: Act III takes place by the harbor at Le Havre. Des Grieux and
Lescaut have come, hoping to rescue Manon before she is deported across the
ocean as an undesirable. Soldiers lead in Manon and other women prisoners,
mainly prostitutes, who will all be deported. There is a roll call as an ensemble
begins. Some of the crowd sympathizes with the fate of the women, while others
mock their plight. The voices of Manon and Des Grieux soar above the
ensemble. Soon we hear an undercurrent of a new theme, a theme which will
soon become the musical climax of the opera. After the all the women are on
board, Des Grieux approaches the captain. In one of the most heart-rending
45
moments in all of opera, Des Grieux beseeches the captain to take him aboard
(Ex. #14).
His poignant melody is in a minor key with a lowered seventh step and repeated
sequentially a step lower. A throbbing accompaniment with accented notes in the
French horns adds a powerful support for Des Grieux’s passionate outcry. During
a break in the phrase, the orchestra peels out fortissimo with the same melody
over pulsating triplets in the accompaniment. At the conclusion of Des Grieux’s
entreaty, the captain responds, “Ah, so you wish to populate the Americas, young
fellow? Well then…let it be so!” The orchestra responds with Des Grieux’s
melody of hope and anticipation of future bliss together with Manon (Ex. #8a),
marked fff in the score, concluding Act III.
Denouement: The fourth and final act of the opera takes place on a desolate
plain in Louisiana, where the lovers have fled after arriving in New Orleans. Both
have tattered clothing and have collapsed from exhaustion. After the first
measure, marked crescendo with a timpani roll and tremolo strings, we hear two
minor chords spanned by a melodic leap of two octaves (Ex. #15). These two
chords represent, in truncated form, the first two notes of the signature “Manon”
motif (Ex. #3b). But unlike their earlier statements, here they are heavily
orchestrated and in a minor key. In one swift stroke, two measures long, Puccini
has captured the hopeless plight of the two lovers.
46
Manon is clearly too ill to go much farther. As Des Grieux goes on a fruitless
search for water, she sings her final aria, “Sola, perduta, abbandonata!” (“Alone,
lost, abandoned”). A poignant oboe melody underscores her despair (Ex. #16a).
She repeats the melody with a powerful gut wrenching cry of “Ah! non voglio
morir” (“Ah, do not let me die”), as her melody soars to a high B flat (Ex. #16b).
A few reminiscences of earlier motifs make their appearance as Manon soon
collapses and dies in Des Grieux’s arms. Two final swelling chords, played twice
in succession—the same chords which opened Act IV and which represent “Manon” along with Des Grieux’s grief and the vast emptiness of the desolate
plains—bring the opera to its tragic conclusion.
47
English/Creative Writing
Modern Adaptation
project idea
Resources required: ‘The story of Manon Lescaut’ from the
preceding pages of this guide.
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their
dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To develop creative
writing skills
Have students write a modern adaptation of the story of the opera, taking the
bare bones of the plot and circumstances of the characters as their starting point.
Extensions of this Activity:
•
This could lead to writing a modern play version of one act of the opera,
either individually or in small groups.
Character Exploration
classroom
project idea
Purpose: To develop critical thinking skills through character
analysis; To develop creative writing skills
For discussion in the classroom:
After reviewing the plot, divide the class into as many groups as there are
characters, nominating one person per group to record the groups’ ideas. Using
the cast list, assign each group a character from the opera. Ask each group to
make a list of words to describe their character’s appearance, age, occupation,
nationality, personality etc. Are they happy with their life? Are they hopeful?
Jaded? What do they really want? Read the lists aloud and discuss them. Ask
the students to justify their ideas.
For a written assignment:
Have students write a diary excerpt for their character from either:
• Manon knowing she has to go live in a convent
48
•
•
•
•
•
des Grieux after meeting Manon for the first time
Manon before she is about to run away with des Grieux
Geronte after he finds Manon and des Grieux together
Another woman who is going to be deported to America
A townsperson after watching the women be called on board towards
America
Themes
classroom
project idea
Resources required: None
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and
their dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To
develop critical thinking skills; To develop essay writing skills
Discuss the themes of the operas and have students write stories based on their
own lives connected to these themes. Have they ever torn between happiness
and security? Been unsure about their feelings for someone? Become jealous?
How did it feel?
What If?
Resources required: None
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and
classroom
project idea
their dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To
develop creative writing skills
Have your students rewrite the story of Manon Lescaut considering the following
“what if”s. What would happen if:
•
•
•
•
Manon had gone to the convent?
des Grieux never met Manon?
Geronte was not rich?
Make up your own plot twist!
49
Rewrite the Scene
classroom
Resources: CD and translations provided
Purpose: To familiarize your students with the music; To help students
identify with the characters and their dilemmas by responding
creatively to the opera; To develop creative writing skills
With your students, listen to the scene where Manon Lescaut and des Grieux first
meet. Provide them with a copy of the translation of the dialogue and read it
together. Have your students rewrite the text of the scene in their own words.
Opera Review
classroom
Resources required: None, though you might like to obtain the New
York Times’ review of the opera (the Times review of an opera always
appears two days before its opera’s season premiere.)
Purpose: To help students think critically about their experience.
What did students like? What did they dislike? Did the opera meet their
expectations? Who was their favorite singer? Who was their least favorite
singer? Compare students’ reviews with the New York Times review.
Too Many Cooks?
Resources required: None.
Purpose: To improve written language skills; To develop creative
writing
classroom
Skills.
The libretto of Manon Lescaut was written by 5 people at different times. What if
you had to write a story, but didn’t have complete control over how it turned out?
With many writers working on the same story, it is possible for ideas to change
based on who is writing. Try your hand as one of the librettists Puccini had
writing the story of Manon Lescaut, and see where your story ends up!
• Divide the class into groups of 5.
• Have groups brainstorm a scene from Manon Lescaut or another story
the students are familiar with (either dialogue between characters or
narrative describing the action or scene)
• Students determine the starting librettist and take turns writing the story
line by line.
• At the end of the activity, share what each group wrote and how they
differ from each other and the original story!
• What were the challenges of this project? Did anything surprise you
50
Viva Verismo!
Resources required: None.
Purpose: To develop creative writing skills
classroom
Verismo-style opera was written with the everyday person in mind. Composers
and writers focused less about kings and royalty and more about the experiences
and emotions of students, townsfolk and everyday life. With that in mind,
brainstorm some subjects a verismo writer might want to write about today. i.e.
lunch in the cafeteria, riding the school bus, recess.
• Get ideas from current events, or something from your own life.
• Write your own version of a verismo story.
51
History/Humanities
HINT: In addition to the activities suggested here, take a look at 'Using
Manon Lescaut to Teach Humanities' in the Resources Section of this
guide.
Manon in America
classroom
Resources needed: None.
Purpose: To develop critical thinking skills and research
historical events
project idea
At the end of the opera, Manon gets deported to America - more specifically New
Orleans. Discuss some of the trials Manon might have experienced had she
lived. Think about the difference in climate, terrain, language, etc. What might a
woman of her status been able to do for work? Might she fall in love with
someone else? Rewrite the ending of Manon Lescaut so that Manon lives. Go
into detail describing the people she meets, the things she has to do to survive,
and what her new life in America is like.
Scene Change
Resources: Possible arts and crafts.
Purpose: To develop critical thinking and research skills
classroom
project idea
The story of Manon Lescaut is a universal one – love, money and scandal! Pick
another country or time period to set this tale in. It could be a modern version, it
could take place in London, or in the 1960s – you could even choose somewhere
from your own heritage. Write a report or give a presentation on the country or
time period that you chose. Include these points:
• Where would the story take place?
• Design costumes that fit the personality and time period.
• Design the sets for each scene.
• What would the music be like?
52
Create an In-House Study Guide
classroom
pro
Resources: None.
Purpose: To understand the story and background of the
opera; to develop research and essay writing skills
Based on an activity by Anthony Marshall, Baldwin Senior High School
Create your own 'in-house' study guide for Manon Lescaut as a class. Each
student will write one article on an aspect of the story, characters, composer or
background. Decide as a class what you will need to cover to provide a
balanced insight into the opera. When students have completed their articles,
collect them in a book and publish it, distributing copies to the whole class.
The World of the Opera
classroom
project idea
Resources required: Take a look in the Resources Section
for research ideas
Purpose: To develop research skills and make connections to
another historical era
Have students imagine they live in the locale of the opera at the time of its
occurrence. How would they 1) travel, 2) contact a friend, 3) find out about daily
events, 4) entertain themselves, 5) eat, sleep, and keep warm? etc. This could
be the basis for a classroom discussion or a research project.
Sponsorship
project idea
Resources required: None
Purpose: To develop critical thinking and creative writing skills
If a production of Manon Lescaut were to be sponsored by a product or
company, what or who would it be and why? Write a proposal to the
president of the company you have chosen explaining why you think it would
be a good idea for them to give funding to a production of Manon Lescaut.
Note: students must point out what the company would gain by sponsoring
the opera, not what the production itself would gain from sponsorship.
53
Music
VMTV – Verismo Music Television
qualities
classroom
Resources: None.
Purpose: To respond imaginatively to the opera’s expressive
Verismo writing is very similar to Reality TV – normal people going through every
day situations. Consider your favorite Reality TV show, or at least one that you
are familiar with.
• What kinds of people are usually picked to be filmed?
• Do the characters always get along?
• How do they go about resolving their issues?
If you were to add your own soundtrack for this Reality TV show, what would the
track list look like?
• What songs would fit for which people?
• Would the characters sing the songs themselves, or be background music
to enhance the mood or situation?
• Would certain characters have musical themes? If so, what would they
sound like?
Puccini vs. Massenet
Resources: Manon Lescaut Highlights CD; Manon CD
Purpose: To develop critical listening skills and respond
creatively to the music
classroom
project idea
Puccini was criticized for wanting to compose his own opera to the story of
Manon Lescaut because only years earlier, Jules Massenet had created an
opera based on the same story. There are many differences between Puccini’s
Manon Lescaut and Massenet’s Manon. For example, Puccini wrote his opera in
Italian and in an Italian style. Massenet wrote his in French.
• Read excerpts of the libretto from both operas.
• Listen to the scene where Manon Lescaut and des Grieux first meet.
This is Track 3 (“Cortese damigella”) of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and
(“Madamoiselle!...Eh, quoi?”) of Massenet’s Manon (borrow CD from
library)
54
•
•
•
•
Discuss the differences or similarities in musical style and/or libretto
writing style.
Write a persuasive letter to the director of the Met about which production
you prefer and why.
Present your argument with specific examples of what you preferred
about one version.
You may also present your own ideas about what else should have been
included in the opera.
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Research Ideas
The following list is a suggestion of topics for further study / research.
Research into one or more of these areas could form the basis of a
project.
project idea
Opera and Music during Puccini’s day:
•
•
•
•
Verismo
Opera in 19th and 20th century Italy
Puccini’s other operas
• La Bohème
• Tosca
• Madama Butterfly
• Turandot
Puccini vs. his librettists: constant disagreements
Italy during Puccini’s day:
• Everyday life
• Politics and Government
• Exploration and travel – especially to America
• Roles of women
Italian Verismo in art and literature
• Antonio Mancini, painter (1852-1930)
“The Poor Schoolboy”
• Vincenzo Gemito, sculptor (1852-1929)
“The Player,” (Il Giocatore)
• Luigi Capuana, author (1839-1915)
“Sta notti,” Sicilian poetry
• Giovanni Verga, author (1840-1922)
Cavalleria Rusticana
Manon Lescaut’s Lifetime:
• Convents in Paris
• France in the mid 18th century
• Student life in Paris
The New Americas:
• French settlement in America
• Louisiana Purchase
• French and Indian Wars
Going Further
• What was going on in the New York City region (or your region) in the 1890’s (the
time of the opera’s composition)? How was life different from life in Italy?
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Foreign Language (Italian)
Translation
Resources required: CD and libretto
Purpose: To improve vocabulary; To improve reading and writing skills
classroom
Choose an aria / chorus / section of either and have students translate these
from the original language into English, looking up words they don't know.
Character Study in Italian
classroom
Resources required: None
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their
dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To improve
vocabulary; To improve conversational skills
Have the students choose a character and tell the story from their chosen
character’s point of view, using personal pronouns, in Italian.
Italian Drama!
Resources required: CD and libretto
Purpose: To improve conversational skills; To improve vocabulary
classroom
Split your class into several small groups. Have the students choose sections
from the original libretto to act out in Italian in front of the rest of the class. They
should look up words they don't know rather than rely on translations provided.
Italian Update
classroom
Purpose: To help students identify with the characters and their
dilemmas by responding creatively to the opera; To improve
vocabulary; To improve writing skills
Have students write a modern adaptation of the story of the opera in Italian,
taking the bare bones of the plot and circumstances of the characters as their
starting point.
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Extension:
This could lead to writing a modern play version of one act of the opera, either
individually or in small groups. Based on an activity by Joseph Materia,
Dumont High School
58
Art / Design
The following art / design activities could be used for the basis of a lesson
or a project.
classroom
project idea
Resources required: Art supplies
Purpose: To respond imaginatively and creatively to the
opera’s expressive qualities
Costume Design
Have your students design and draw a costume for one of the characters in
Manon Lescaut. Before beginning the project, have them do some preliminary
research into French style of art or clothing to see what sorts of things the real
Manon Lescaut would wear. The final costume could be traditional, modern or
abstract, but make sure students explain the reasons for their choices below their
illustration.
Set and Lighting Design
Have your students think about the story of Manon Lescaut. What elements of
artistry (primarily art and architecture) were essential to the [opera setting’s]
society?
Can they think of a different setting for Manon Lescaut? Are there any themes
that would work in a different time period? How would you translate the French
artistry into a different setting?
Describe the set and the tone of the lighting for your new design –
•
•
•
•
Is it a happy atmosphere or a sad one?
Where and when is the production set?
What is the weather like?
What do the set and lighting decisions tell the audience about the physical
world of the opera?
The design should be illustrated.
59
Commercial
Have your students create an advertisement for Manon Lescaut. Consider:
•
•
What is the biggest selling point of the opera – what makes it exciting?
How could they entice people to come to a performance?
First they should write a proposal that they might make if they wanted the
Metropolitan Opera to use the commercial. Second, depending on the medium
they have chosen, they should either draw the advertisement, or rehearse it with
others and present it as though actually acting in it.
60
Resources
Using Manon Lescaut to Teach Humanities, by Zeke Hecker
Opera News Article
Lalli, Richard. “The Manon Variations.” March, 2006
Opera News Article
Phillips-Matz, Mary-Jane. “Friends and Rivals.” January, 2000.
Libretti and Translations
Met Facts
Glossary and Definitions
61
Using Manon Lescaut to Teach Humanities
By Zeke Hecker
MANON LESCAUT: A STUDY GUIDE
A. SETTING THE STAGE
I must ask my Reader to hark back to that period of my life when I was to meet
for the first time the Chevalier des Grieux ... To my surprise, I found on entering
the Town the inhabitants all commotion, flocking from their houses to crowd
round the door of a mean hostelry, before which stood two covered wagons. The
horses, still harnessed and smoking with heat and exhaustion, were evidence
that the vehicles had but now arrived. I halted a moment to inquire whence all
this stir, but got little satisfaction: the crowd was too inquisitive to pay any heed to
my questions ... Finally, however, an Archer, bandolier and musket on shoulder,
appeared in the doorway: I beckoned him towards me, and begged him to tell
what all the stir was about. Tis naught, Sir, said he, tis a dozen filles de joie that
my company and I are taking to Havre-de-Grace, to put them aboard ship for
America. There are a few pretty ones among them ... I went in, making my way
with difficulty through the crowd, and saw what indeed was pitiful enough.
Among the twelve girls, chained by the waist six by six, was one whose face and
carriage were so little in accord with her condition that in any other circumstances
I should have taken her for a Princess. Her grief, the dirt of her linen and of her
clothes did so little to disfigure her that the sight of her filled me with respect and
compassion. She was trying nevertheless to turn away as much as her chain
allowed her, so as to hide her face from the eyes that beset her: the effort she
was making to hide was so natural that it seemed to come from an innate
sweetness and modesty ... Yonder is a young man, added the Archer, who could
tell you more about her than I can: he has followed her from Paris, and hardly for
a moment ceased crying. He must be a brother or a lover ... I approached him;
he rose to his feet, and I was aware in his eyes, in his face, and in his every
gesture, of a spirit so delicate and so noble that I felt instinctively drawn to wish
him well. Pray do not let me disturb you, I said, seating myself beside him. But
will you be good enough to satisfy my curiosity as to that beautiful creature, who
seems to me in no way designed for the sorry condition in which I see her? He
made answer courteously that he could not tell me who she was without
revealing himself, and that he had strong reasons for wishing to remain unknown.
But I can tell you ... he went on ... that I love her with a passion so violent that it
makes me the most unfortunate of men. I tried every means in Paris to obtain
her liberty; entreaties, stratagem and main force, were alike useless. I then
resolved to follow her, should she go to the ends of the earth. I shall embark with
her; I shall cross to America.
(Abbé Prévost, from The Story of Manon Lescaut, translated by Helen Waddell)
62
The subject Puccini chose was neither contemporary nor violent, but one which
would give opportunity to expansive love music and tuneful sadness. It was the
romantic novel of the Abbé Prévost entitled The Story of the Chevalier des
Grieux and of Manon Lescaut. It was an old classic, having been published in
1731, a century and a half before. Puccini fell in love with Manon. She is the
first of the faulty, simple, but appealing young girls whose sisters are Mimi,
Musetta, Tosca, Cio-Cio-San, and Liu.
(Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock)
[Prévost’s Manon Lescaut is] “frankly licentious, perfidious, loving, disturbing,
spirituelle, formidable, and charming ... so filled with seductiveness and
instinctive perfidy, the author seems to have embodied all that is most pleasing,
most attractive, and most infamous in the creature Woman ... Woman as she has
been, is, and ever shall be .. Eve, the eternal, cunning naive temptress who
never tells good from evil and by the mere power of her mouth and eyes leads
strong men and weak astray.”
(Guy de Maupassant)
Donna non vidi mai simile a questa!
A dirle: “io t’amo,” a nuova vita l’alma mia
si desta. “Manon Lescaut mi chiamo!”
Come queste parole profumate mi vagan
nello spirito e ascose fibre vanno a carezzare.
(I have never seen a woman like this one!
To say to her “I love you” would bring new life
to my soul. “My name is Manon Lescaut.”
Those fragrant words reach deep into my spirit
and caress the hidden fibers of my being.)
(Libretto to Puccini’s “Manon Lescaut”)
[Manon is] “a heroine I believe in and therefore one who cannot fail to win the
hearts of the public.”
(Giacomo Puccini)
Over the years ... the words “Puccini heroine” have become a kind of
abbreviation, a critical shorthand. We know what they mean, or think we do, and
we use the expression because it is handy. But in reality, it is hard to paraphrase
or define. It is true that in some ways most Puccini heroines resemble one
another; they have certain qualities in common. And yet each is strongly
characterized ...
63
Take Manon ... Manon is one of those characters -- like Don Juan -- who steps
outside of any literary frame, defies any specific author, and asserts an existence
of his or her own.
Actually, even in the original novel of Abbé Prévost, the figure of Manon, at a first
reading, does not seem especially interesting. Indeed, Des Grieux, the narrator,
is more vital, more active, though no more admirable than his irresistibly beautiful
and almost entirely unscrupulous beloved. Manon is largely passive.
... in his determination to avoid repeating Massenet’s story line, Puccini made his
librettists move from Amiens directly to Manon’s grand Paris establishment ...
Then comes the elaborate and successful Le Havre scene, and finally -- as a
coda – Manon’s death in Louisiana, where the lovers are alone at last, but only, it
seems, for a moment. The structure of the libretto has been much criticized; but
in a sense, it is like its successor, La Boheme, and could with justice have been
entitled Scenes de la vie de Manon Lescaut. As in the later opera, these scenes,
with huge narrative gaps between them, do not aim to tell a story in a traditional
form; they illustrate a world. There is no good-versus-evil conflict, no demands
are made by honor; the obstacles to be overcome are all external and, to some
extent, self-induced. The simplicity of the characters measures exactly the depth
to which Puccini wanted to delve.
Puccini’s Manon says, at the end, “ma l’amore mio non muore” (“but my love will
not die”); but the statement is ambiguous. Manon’s definition of love would have
to be all-embracing, allowing her to be deceitful, unfaithful to her lover. Her
death, sad as it is, does not redeem her ... She is more the victim of a stern legal
system -- deportation to Louisiana seems excessive punishment for her crimes -than of a tragic attachment ... Manon’s end is due simply to bad luck.
(William Weaver)
“... the reorganization of the country’s ruined finances was accomplished by the
Scottish entrepreneur John Law, the comptroller general.” With his radical
reforms encouraged by the court, Law stabilized the currency, organized a state
bank, expanded trade, and founded the Mississippi company, a large colonial
enterprise that financed the production of tobacco and coffee in Louisiana. Quick
fortunes were made in wild speculation but, ultimately, the inevitable decline set
in. When the hoped-for large-scale emigration did not materialize, prisoners and
prostitutes were deported to Louisiana -- the fate of Manon and her impulsive
lover Des Grieux in Prévost’s contemporary (1731) novel and in the operas of
Auber (1856) and Puccini (1893). In Massenet’s Manon (1884), death claims
Manon on the road to the embarcation point of Le Havre.
(George Jellinek)
The making of Manon Lescaut was long and hard. Five librettists were
employed. The scenario was often altered: first, to avoid parallels too close to
Massenet;s Manon (1884); later, and more interestingly, because in Manon
64
herself Puccini compounded several different heroines while passing though
several different manners that in his later works are more clearly defined. As a
result, Manon Lescaut is the most copious and the least precisely cut of his
operas. Theatrically it is a less successful piece than are La Boheme, Tosca,
and Madama Butterfly, but it is fresh and attractive. In it we meet not a finished
master, certain of all his effects, but an enthusiast, prolific and ambitious, striving
to find his individual style. While Massenet’s Manon has delightful variety,
Puccini’s Manon is inconsistent, and so is his score ...Whereas Massenet,
Puccini had announced, “felt Manon like a Frenchman, with the powder and the
minuets, I shall feel it as an Italian, with desperate passion.”
(Andrew Porter)
Wagner differentiated the operatic music of the Italians from that of the French by
contrasting two variants of female immorality. Italian music, he thought, was a
whore, brazen and lurid; French music was a coldly smiling coquette. The
difference is that between Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and Massenet’s Manon -- a
savage, grasping ardor which parches and dies in the desert of its own
obsession, against a more courtly frippery and a giggling wantonness.
(Peter Conrad)
Ricordi was right when he said that it was a miracle that the libretto turned out to
be “not bad.” Considering that it is a thing of shreds and patches, it is remarkably
good. Manon is a character fathered by six authors, Leoncavallo, Praga, Oliva,
Giacosa, Illica, and finally Ricordi himself, who contributed a number of verses
(especially in the third act). None of these six authors wished to acknowledge
paternity. None felt that he had played a sufficiently decisive role to say that the
libretto was by him. Therefore the score was published without crediting any ot
the six librettists ... Even the Abbé Prévost had disappeared from the title page.
A weakness of the libretto may be due to the fact that Puccini wished to avoid
duplication with Massenet’s work. Most of the events on the stage are those
which occur in Massenet’s opera between the acts, though this is not true of the
first act, which is similar to Massenet’s. The interval between Acts I and II may
well hold the librettic broad-jump record ... Manon meets Des Grieux in the first
act and runs away with him. At the beginning of the second, Manon has not only
been Des Grieux’s mistress and has then broken off with him, but is now already
weary of being Geronte’s mistress!
(Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock)
What is certain is that he was working with a very uneven text. The story line
lacks both the slow-moving, cumulative force of the Abbé Prévost’s loquacious
original version -- which could never have been squeezed into an operatic mold - and the quick, hard-hitting impact that a masterly, incisive libretto would have
lent it. Having passed at various time through the hands of Marco Praga,
Domenico Oliva, Luigi Illica, and others, including the composer, the Manon
65
libretto could only have come out botched -- and so it did. As a result, Puccini
had no choice but to deemphasize the plot and to stake everything on the
musical characterization of the two protagonists. As in the case of Tristan und
Isolde, Manon’s plot is, simply, the fatal attraction between the two main
characters -- a fact that my help to explain why Puccini, perhaps subconsciously,
leaned heavily on the Tristan Prelude when he wrote Manon’s Intermezzo ...
Insofar as Manon Lescaut is more a “character opera” than a “plot opera,” it is
the most Verdian of Puccini’s works. And Des Grieux, tormented by and
obsessed with his love for Manon, more closely resembles Verdi’s last four tenorheroes ... than he resembles any of the male protagonists Puccini himself would
later produce.
(Harvey Sachs)
... Des Grieux, the protagonist of Prévost’s tale, is the first in a line of lovers ...
who live on, matured by their experience, after the heroine has died.
(Andrew Porter)
Manon Lescaut spelled the death of short-lived operatic Verism ... According to
Grout, it is the aim of Verism “simply to present a vivid, melodramatic plot, to
arouse sensation by violent contrast, to paint a cross-section of life without
concerning itself with any general significance the action might have.” Veristic
music thus “aims simply and directly at the expression of intense passion through
melodic or exclamatory phrases,” everything being so arranged that “the
moments of excitement follow one another in swift climactic succession!”
(George Marek)
...degradation is the rule of realism. It happens to Manon between Massenet’s
version and Puccini’s. Massenet’s girl lives on the surface, dedicated to that
“pursuit of happiness” which was the creed of the eighteenth century, when the
Abbé Prévost wrote his novel about her. Puccini makes this frivolous hedonist
real by making her a monster -- vicious, grasping, yet sustained by a will to live
which, when she protests against death in the desert, has an almost Darwinian
force. She is a man-eating Isolde, and Puccini’s score has been invaded by the
languishing disease of the “Tristan” chord. The worst Massenet’s Manon does to
des Grieux is to entice him away from taking holy orders at St. Sulpice to play
faro at the Hotel Transylvanie. Puccini’s heroine destroys her des Grieux, who
begins as a nonchalant boy and ends a groveling wreck, begging for a menial job
on the ship which takes her to imprisonment in America.
(Peter Conrad)
Puccini ... realized long before the opening night of Manon that he had written
something extraordinary, because people in the company had gone “mad” over
the music. His triumph was complete on February 1, 1893: thirty curtain calls for
66
him, and the tenor and soprano weeping with emotion as they all stood together
onstage ... For Puccini, his long wait was over, and he had won at last.
(Mary Jane Phillips-Matz)
And when you come to Puccini, the composer of the latest Manon Lescaut, then
indeed the ground is so transformed that you could almost think yourself in a new
country ... in Manon Lescaut the domain of Italian opera is enlarged by an
annexation of German territory. The first act, which is as gay and effective and
romantic as the opening of any version of Manon need be, is also unmistakably
symphonic in its treatment. There is genuine symphonic modification,
development, and occasionally combination of the thematic material, all in a
dramatic way, but also in a musically homogeneous way, so that the act is really
a single movement with episodes instead of being a succession of separate
numbers ...
Puccini, at least, shows no signs of atrophy of the melodic faculty: he breaks out
into catching melodies quite in the vein of Verdi ...
On that and other accounts, Puccini looks to me more like the heir of Verdi than
any of his rivals.
(George Bernard Shaw)
Like Verdi, Puccini reached his first maturity in his middle thirties: Manon
Lescaut was his Rigoletto. In it are, though not frequently in final form, the
elements of his musical individuality. Sweet, pungent, and diverse harmonies,
lush romantic melodies, calculated contrasts, schooled effects carried out with
pared means -- such are the qualities of Manon Lescaut ... Even the Intermezzo,
La Prigionia [“The Prisoner”], which is a small tone poem, has the harmonic tang,
feminine charm, and intimate flavor that were to remain the characteristics of
Puccini’s instrumental interludes ...
When Puccini set the same subject matter ... of the Massenet Manon, many
wondered at the boldness of the junior who had dared invite comparison with a
work to which a large section of the European public was almost idolatrously
attached ... His Manon Lescaut is, in most musical respects, a far more
interesting score than Manon, which is its superior only in dramatic unity and
impact.
(Wallace Brockway and Herbert Weinstock)
... most opera-goers feel that Puccini’s music more than compensates for the
libretto’s inadequacies. For it is already the music of a genius ... no opera by
Puccini can boast so great a number of melodies as Manon Lescaut has in
glorious profusion ... I number close to fifty quotable tunes, some of them used
recurrently, almost as leitmotifs, some of them (particularly those in the love duet
in Act II) ringing out passionately and then never heard again.
67
This was, in 1893, clearly a new voice in opera ...
But it was a voice that, as Puccini came eventually to regret, sounded too
exclusively in his work, and with too much of the composer’s personal
morbidezza -- not morbidity, but a softness, a kind of despondent melancholy at
the inevitability of suffering in human lives. This came to be something of a
hallmark of Puccini’s output.
[Some] critics lament that Massenet’s Manon has in recent years been eclipsed
by Puccini’s, even though Massenet tells a coherent story with a threedimensional heroine and Puccini gives us four virtually unconnected scenes and
a largely unexplained heroine who suffers, with each successive appearance,
ever further humiliation and degradation. What has made the difference with the
public is of course a flood of passionate melody that is Puccini’s and Puccini’s
alone -- and perhaps too something that has been commented on less often but
has always been there in Puccini’s work, latent even beneath the youthful
confidence of Manon Lescaut, something to set against Massenet’s suave
professionalism ... a kind of vulnerability.
Puccini was, all his life, easily hurt ...
Puccini may have thought -- he certainly said -- that his artistic impulse was
rooted in his clinical observation of the sufferings of the women in his operas.
But artists aren’t always best at understanding themselves. (Most of them are
notoriously unreliable at it.) Puccini seems in fact to have been as vulnerable as
any of his heroines. If, as commentators relentlessly point out, he inflicted
sufferings upon them, he too had felt such suffering.
(M. Owen Lee)
It is second-rate stuff ... a coarseness of sensitivity and a deep cynicism towards
true dramatic values ... Talent, craft, and pretentiousness are no substitute for
spirit ...
The most extraordinary thing about this composer is his lack of penetration. He
had, alas, a clear sense of the theater, a facility above the average, and a
genuine talent for memorable little turns of melody within a narrow emotional
span. In this respect Puccini is quite like George Gershwin, and a cut above
most of his own contemporaries ...
(Joseph Kerman)
... the genius which was finely disclosed in Manon Lescaut and went lame in La
Fanciulla del West.
(Henry Krehbiel)
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B. QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION AND WRITING
1. Several of the above writers, notably de Maupassant, Conrad, and Weaver,
discuss the character of Manon as a female archetype (or, to put it more
negatively, stereotype). Weaver addresses the idea of the “Puccini heroine.”
How do you see the Manon of Puccini’s opera? Is she the amoral temptress de
Maupassant describes? The passive suffering victim Weaver describes? If we,
the audience, are attracted to her, what qualities does she have that justify this
attraction?
2. Des Grieux is the central character of Abbé Prévost’s novel (though Manon is
the title character). In Puccini’s opera, it is Manon who gets the spotlight, but
Sachs and Porter devote some attention to des Grieux. How do you see his
character? Is he admirable? If so, what are his strengths and virtues? Or is he
merely a pathetic, overwrought lover who has fixated on an unworthy object of
desire?
3. The commentators in Part A either dwell on the libretto’s weaknesses or try to
find some way of justifying its discontinuities. What do you think of the libretto:
good? bad? middling? Do those discontinuities create confusion, or diminish
the pleasure you get from the opera? Is the de-emphasis of plot and the
concentration on character (as described by Sachs) a plus, or a minus?
4. Marek and Conrad discuss Manon Lescaut in relation to the movement in late
nineteenth century Italian opera known as Verismo (Verism, or Realism), which
was related to contemporaneous literary movements in Europe and America.
Marek quotes the definition of Verism supplied by Donald Grout. Based on that
definition and your understanding of the term as it applies to literature and
drama, would you call Manon Lescaut a Verismo opera? If so, what makes it
realistic?
A related question: is realism what we want from opera? Is opera capable of
realism?
5. Owen Lee discusses the strain of morbidezza in Puccini’s operas, which he
defines as “a kind of despondent melancholy at the inevitability of suffering in
human lives.” He relates it to Puccini’s own life and sufferings, but suggests that
Puccini may not have seen the connection because he lacked self-understanding
(as many artists do, according to Lee). This raises a number of questions. First,
do you hear this “morbidezza” in the music of Manon Lescaut. Second, do you
agree that artists in general, and Puccini in particular, often lack the kind of
introspective insight that would enable them to see the connection between their
lives and their art?
6. Shaw praises Manon Lescaut and hails Puccini as the heir to Verdi. Krehbiel
thinks Puccini peaked with Manon Lescaut and then slid downhill. For Kerman,
Puccini is “second-rate stuff,” with a “narrow emotional span” and a “lack of
penetration.” Who is right?
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C. PROJECTS AND FURTHER RESEARCH
1. Read Abbé Prévost’s novel. You’ll find it in many ways more disturbing, even
shocking, than Puccini’s opera. Both Manon and des Grieux behave very badly,
even criminally, and the tone is unrelievedly grim.
2. Get to know Massenet’s Manon (it’s in the Met repertory; see the study guide
under “All Operas” on this website) and compare it to Puccini’s Manon Lescaut
both musically and dramatically.
3. All of Puccini’s mature works, from Manon Lescaut on, are in the Met’s
repertory; you’ll find study guides at this site. They’re some of the world’s most
popular operas (much to Joseph Kerman’s dismay). If you don’t know La
Boheme, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot already, you probably should
start with them. As you do, think especially about the “Puccini heroine” and the
terrible fate that she usually suffers. Also, in such later operas as La Fanciulla
del West and Il Trittico, do you hear the same decline that Krehbiel does?
4. Several of the writers in Part A discuss Puccini in relation to his predecessor
Verdi. An especially useful comparison (or contrast) may be made between the
latter’s La Traviata and Puccini’s Manon Lescaut.
5. Questions 3 and 4 raise the issue of the “woman of easy virtue” in opera.
There are plenty. Consider, just to mention a few: Dalila in Saint-Saens’
Samson et Dalila; Violetta in the aforementioned La Traviata; Jenny in Weill’s
Mahagonny; Mimi in La Boheme and Magda in Puccini’s lesser-known La
Rondine; Carmen in Bizet’s eponymous opera, Thaïs in Massenet’s, and Lulu in
Berg’s. Assess these portrayals of seductresses from a feminist perspective.
(Especially instructive here is the book Opera, or the Undoing of Women by
Catherine Clement).
6. The influence of Wagner on Manon Lescaut has been much noted. Shaw
writes wittily of Puccini’s “annexation” of Germany. The final act of Puccini’s
opera is a kind of Liebestod (“love-death”) reminiscent of the final act of
Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde, though the differences may be more apparent than
the similarities. See the study guide for Tristan und Isolde.
7. The two most famous examples of Verismo in Italian opera are usually paired
on a double bill: Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Leoncavallo’s I Pagliacci.
The first third of Puccini’s triple bill (Il Trittico) is also his most “veristic” opera: Il
Tabarro (“The Cloak”). Knowing these may assist you in deciding to what extent
Manon Lescaut is a verismo opera, and in what ways it departs from the verismo
aesthetic.
8. To understand the context of Manon Lescaut’s Act IV, research the history of
the French colonial presence in North America, especially Louisiana.
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Libretto Translations
Cortese damigella’ (Track 3)
DES GRIEUX
(che non avrà mai distolto gli occhi da Manon e
le si avvicina)
Cortese damigella, il priego mio acetate:
Dican le dolci labbra come vi chiamate.
DES GRIEUX
(who has never once taken his eyes off Manon,
now approaches her)
Gentle lady, accept my prayer:
Let those sweet lips tell me your name?
MANON
(con semplicità e modestamente, alzandosi)
Manon Lescaut mi chiamo
MANON
(simply and modestly as she rises)
I am called Manon Lescaut.
DES GRIEUX
Perdonate al dir mio,
ma da un fascino arcano a voi spinto son io.
Persino il vostro volto parmi aver visto, e strani
moti ha il mio core.
Perdonate al dir mio!
Quando partirete?
DES GRIEUX
Forgive my words,
but I am drawn to you by some mysterious
fascination.
I even seem to have seen your face before,
And strange feelings move my heart.
Forgive me words!
When do you leave?
MANON
Domani all’alba io parto.
Un chiostro m’attende.
MANON
I leave tomorrow, at day break.
A cloister awaits me.
DES GRIEUX
E in voi l’aprile nel volto palesa e fiorisce!
O gentile, qual fato vi fa guerra?
(Edmondo con cautela si avvicina agli Studenti
che sono all’osteria, ed indica loro
furbescamente Des Grieux, che è in stretto
colloquio con Manon)
DES GRIEUX
And in you, spring is revealed blooming on your
cheek!
O lovely one, what unkind fate makes war upon
you?
(Edmund cautiously approaches the students in
the inn, slyly pointing to Des Grieux, who is
conversing intimately with Manon)
MANON
Il mio fato si chiama: Voler del padre mio.
MANON
My fate is called: My father’s will.
DES GRIEUX
Oh, come siete bella!
Ah! No! non è un convento che sterile vi brama!
No! sul vostro destino riluce un’altra stella.
DES GRIEUX
Oh, how beautiful you are!
Ah! No! It is no sterile convent that calls you!
No! Another star shines on your destiny.
MANON
La mia stella tramonta!
MANON
My star is setting!
DES GRIEUX
Or parlar non possiamo.
Ritornate fra poco,
e conspiranti contro
il fato, vinceremo.
DES GRIEUX
We cannot talk now.
Return soon, and,
Conspiring against your fate,
We shall conquer it.
MANON
Tanta pieta traspare
Dale vostre parole!
Vo’ ricordarvi! Il nome vostro?
MANON
Your words show so much pity!
I should like to remember you!
What is your name?
DES GRIEUX
Son Renato des Grieux
71
DES GRIEUX
I am Renato des Grieux.
raggiunge. Des Grieux avrà seguito Manon
collo sguardo.)
LESCAUT
(from within)
Manon!
LESCAUT
(di dentro)
Manon!
MANON
I must leave you.
(turning to the inn)
I’m coming!
(to Des Grieux)
My brother called me.
MANON
Lasciarvi debbo.
(volgendosi verso l’alberto)
Vengo!
(a Des Grieux)
M’ha chiamata mio fratello.
DES GRIEUX
(pleading)
You will come back here?
DES GRIEUX
(supplichevole)
Qui tornate?
MANON
No, I cannot. Please leave me.
MANON
No! non posso. Mi lasciate!
DES GRIEUX
O lovely one, I implore you…
DES GRIEUX
O gentile, vi scongiuro…
MANON
(moved)
You have conquered me.
When it is dark, it will be!
(She breaks off. Seeing Lescaut come out on to
the balcony of the inn, she quickly joins him.
Des Grieux follows her with his glace.)
MANON
(commossa)
Mi vincete.
Quando oscuro l’aere intorno a noi sarà!
(S’interrompe. Vede Lescaut che sarà venuto
sul balcone dell’osteria e frettolosamente lo
72
‘Mademoiselle!...Eh, quoi?’ (CD 1, Track 16)
(Peu à peu et involontairement il s’est rapproché
de Manon)
DES GRIEUX
Mademoiselle!
(Step by step and involuntarily he is approaching
Manon)
DES GRIEUX
Mademoiselle!
MANON
Eh, quoi?
MANON
Yes, what?
DES GRIEUX
Pardonnez-moi! Jen e sais, j’obéis, je ne
suis plus mom maître, je vous vois, j’en suis
sûr, pour la première fois, et mon cœur
cependant vient de vous reconnaître!
Et je sais votre nom…
DES GRIEUX
Forgive me! I do not know…I am obeying, I’m
no longer my own master. I am seeing you,
surely, for the very first time, yet my heart
feels as if you were a long-lost acquaintance!
And I know you name…
MANON
On m’appelle Manon.
MANON
My name is Manon.
DES GRIEUX
Manon!
DES GRIEUX
Manon!
MANON (à part)
Que son regard est tender!
Et que j’ai de plaisir à l’entendre!
MANON (aside)
How gentle his expression is!
And what a delight it is to listen to him!
DES GRIEUX
Ces paroles d’un fou, veuillez les pardoner!
DES GRIEUX
These words of a madman, please excuse them!
MANON
Comment les condemner?
Elles charment le cœur en charmant les
Oreilles!
J’en voudrais savoir des pareilles
pour vous les repeater!
MANON
Why condemn them?
They enchant my heart and delight my ears!
I should like to know
Similar words so as to repeat them to you!
DES GRIEUX
Enchantress!
With an overpowering spell!
Manon!
You are the mistress of my heart!
DES GRIEUX
Enchanteresse!
Au charme vainqueur!
Manon!
Vous êtes la maîtresse de mon cœur!
MANON
Charming words!
MANON
Mots charmants!
DES GRIEUX
Oh Manon!
DES GRIEUX
Ô Manon!
MANON
The intoxicating fever,
the intoxicating fever of happiness!
MANON
Enivrantes fièvres,
enivrantes fièvres du bonheur!
DES GRIEUX
You are mistress,
you are mistress of my heart!
DES GRIEUX
Vous êtes maîtresse,
vous êtes maîtresse du mon cœur.
73
The Manon Variations
Is this the one where she dies in Louisiana? RICHARD
LALLI explains how to tell the difference between Manon
and Manon Lescaut.
This is a tough one: Massenet’s most beloved
creation pitted again Puccini’s first hit (although only
number six on his eventual hit parade). Both were
triumphs, and Caruso sang them at the Met in 1907
and 1909 (Puccini first, of course). The premieres
came less than ten years apart; when Puccini’s
publisher Giulio Ricordi questioned the wisdom of
writing another Manon, especially so soon, Puccini
said that a woman such as Manon can have two
lovers. (Or three: Auber and Scribe’s Manon Lescaut
had had its premiere at the Opéra-Comique in 1856,
Massenet and Meilhac– Gille’s in the same theater in
1884.) How fair is the comparison of the mature
Massenet’s masterpiece to puppy Puccini’s first
success?
Met Massenet: Renée Fleming
© Beth Bergman 2006
A brief synopsis is necessary before comparisons are
made. In Massenet’s version: 1) Manon meets des
Grieux on her way to the convent; they steal a
carriage and fly to Paris that night. 2) Des Grieux’s
father has him abducted. 3) Manon takes up with a
wealthy man. 4) Manon convinces des Grieux not to
become an abbé, but rather to live with her. 5) Des
Grieux is accused of cheating at gambling. 6) Both
have been arrested, but des Grieux is freed, with
daddy’s help, and tries to help Manon escape. 7) Sent
to America, des Grieux helps Manon escape; she dies
of exhaustion. (I would too!) Puccini requires only
steps 1, 3, 6 and 7.
Let’s assume you’ve not heard either opera in its
entirety — certainly you know the hits. Cast a vote
based on the opening alone: in Puccini’s first scene,
after a sunny, one-minute orchestral introduction, we
Chicago Lyric Puccini: Karita
hear happy students, and eleven minutes into the
Mattila
© Dan Rest/Lyric Opera of
scene, after the tenor’s aria, the lovers meet and
Chicago 2006
sparks are flying. In Massenet, after three or four
minutes of orchestral circus music, we hear prostitutes
and bad guys shouting for food. Eventually Manon
appears; time stops while she sings not one but two
arias. Thirty minutes into the opera our tenor finally appears and falls in love at first
sight. (Those Italians were quicker!) Massenet fills the stage with opéra-comique stock
74
items: church scene, street scene, gambling scene, dialogue, monologue. His charming
dances and songs cover up the sordid undergrowth; indeed, his crucial moments come
when the two lovers stand apart from the crowd. It’s complicated and ever shifting.
Puccini seems simplistic by comparison.
Economy of means, good theatrical sense, or just different attention spans? Let’s face it
— both operas make mincemeat of the Abbé Prévost’s original. (Yes, he really was an
abbé, when he wasn’t lapsing, which he did a lot, and yes, there was a Manon in his life,
but not until after he wrote the story.) Manon leaves des Grieux three times in the novel
but only once in the operas. In the novel, the story is a story within a story, told to a nice
gentleman by des Grieux a few months after returning from Louisiana. (Yes, they did
send prostitutes there in 1719, when Prévost was writing.) Manon never really talks. It is
only des Grieux’s account of her talking that we hear, and then only the version that the
nice gentleman decides to write down in his seven volumes of memoirs. Not an easy
story to boil down; Puccini went through six librettists before reaching a satisfactory
distillation.
How do the actual sounds of the operas compare? Each is fascinating in its own right:
Puccini creates a musical language that can seem monotonous (except for those
showpiece arias), but it’s a creamy, golden, comforting language; once you let yourself
be wrapped in it, you’re in a passionate world filled with youthful melody. Massenet, on
the other hand, teases, flirts and excites. He throws in everything but the kitchen sink:
melodrama, dances, more dances, recitative, sound effects, more dances, contrasting arias
and blazing duets. (Puccini remarked that he wanted to create something other than
minuets and powders.)
Massenet and Puccini were both masters of the theater; it is no coincidence that each
wrote precious little other than theatrical music. (Yes, there is a Puccini string quartet,
and yes, there are Massenet songs, but these are not major.) Too bad they aren’t on
Broadway today. Caught in the late-nineteenth-century craze for musical theater, they
found themselves in the shadows of giants: Verdi, Bellini, Rossini, Donizetti, Bizet and
that colossal northerner, Wagner. They searched for new means of expression, without
going quite so far as, say, Debussy and Strauss would go during the next few years. They
were too steeped in tonal music, formulaic stories, grand emotions and high-octane
singing. They needed to entertain the nouveaux riches, as well as the old-monied. What
better vehicle than Manon, a simple country girl (right!) trapped in the corrupt society of
Regency France? Wasn’t she one of the first modern women to figure out how to turn
social differences to her advantage?
In the final analysis, Massenet’s Manon is probably more proficient from a technical
point of view; it is certainly truer to the novel and more French, if a bit earthbound.
Massenet is the ultimate craftsman. Yet Puccini’s version, while rambling and untrue, can
move us to that world of the sublime. Is he the greater artistic genius? You choose.
RICHARD LALLI (yes, it’s an Italian name) teaches courses related to singing at Yale
University and the Mannes College of Music.
75
Friends and Rivals
Late-nineteenth-century Milan
was a fiercely competitive place to be a composer.
MARY JANE PHILLIPS-MATZ reveals how professional jealousy
eventually soured the early-career camaraderie
of five celebrated musicians
he tangled personal lives and careers of Giacomo Puccini, Alfredo Catalani,
Ruggero Leoncavallo, Alberto Franchetti and Pietro Mascagni often drew them into
mutually supportive relationships when they were young. Three of the composers had
studied with the same teacher -- Giacomo Puccini's uncle, Fortunato Magi, who taught
Catalani and Franchetti as well as Puccini. And as they matured, all five had formal or
informal ties to the Royal Conservatory in Milan and particularly to Amilcare Ponchielli,
who taught there.
These aspiring musicians stayed in Milan to promote their works in
the Galleria and at La Scala and the Teatro dal Verme. Their most
important contacts, however, led them to the mighty music
publishing houses. Casa Ricordi, headed by Giulio Ricordi, far
outclassed its chief rival, Casa Sonzogno. Ricordi published the
works of many important composers -- both Italians and foreigners - but Verdi was its chief source of income. At Casa Lucca, the third
contender, the elderly and feared Giovannina Lucca presided. She
had been active since the 1840s and could boast of having had Verdi
and Wagner under contract, Verdi briefly and Wagner for the long
term. The importance of these publishing houses grew in proportion
to the waning influence of impresarios and theatrical agents. In fact,
Puccini and his companions lived in the era of what John Rosselli,
author of The Opera Industry from Cimarosa to Verdi, calls "The End of the Impresario."
The all-powerful music publishers came to control the opera industry worldwide as no
single impresario had ever done. The reach of the publishers' authority and the fierce
rivalry among them affected all composers, young and old. To some it brought fame, to
others ruin.
This, then, was the environment in which these young composers fought for survival.
Puccini was by no means the wisest of them. In terms of cultural experience, both
Leoncavallo and Franchetti had a slight edge over Puccini and Mascagni, for they had
been abroad and traveled extensively. Leoncavallo had worked in Egypt and France in
the early 1880s; Franchetti had studied in Venice, Dresden and Munich. He was also
wealthy and held a title: he was Baron Franchetti. His mother, Marie Louise de
Rothschild, had been a pupil of Franz Liszt. Puccini's position was bolstered not by
private means but by the generations of composers in his family; the Puccinis had
dominated church music in Lucca for nearly a century. He also had the advantages of
genius and the vast culture of his background in Lucca but knew nothing of the rest of
76
Europe, to say nothing of Egypt. Compared with the others, the unpolished Mascagni, a
baker's son, was crude clay.
As these men set out to launch their careers, a strong comradeship
bound them together. In the 1880s, the most promising of the crowd
was Catalani, described by Puccini biographer Mosco Carner as "the
great hope of Italian opera." Puccini admired his fellow-townsman,
and Catalani responded by inviting Puccini to his house in Milan and
offering him sound advice. Their friendship, however, lasted only until
Puccini embarked on a serious career of his own. Then Catalani, who
was suffering from tuberculosis, began to suspect that Ricordi's
support for Puccini, along with Verdi's interest in the newcomer,
would drive his own operas from the stage. Catalani was bitter and afraid, seeing Verdi as
"the king" bestowing his favor on Puccini, his "crown prince."
Over the next decade, this group became known as the "Giovane Scuola" (Young
School). Mascagni and Puccini shared an apartment for a while, living their own "vie de
Bohème" in Milan. Later, Puccini and Leoncavallo were down-the-lane neighbors in their
Swiss retreat in Vacallo, while Leoncavallo was writing Pagliacci and Puccini was
working on Manon Lescaut.
The first of the "Young School" to make his mark was Puccini, whose Le Willis (later
revised as Le Villi) reached the Teatro dal Verme in 1884 and La Scala in 1885. His
Edgar followed in 1889. Franchetti emerged with Asrael in 1888, winning praise when
Verdi saw it at the Teatro Carlo Felice in Genoa. The two were already acquainted, for
seven years earlier Verdi had invited Franchetti to dinner in Palazzo Doria in Genoa, a
rare privilege for the young composer, who was only twenty-one at the time. Thanks to
Verdi's influence, Franchetti got another important commission, Cristoforo Colombo, for
the 1892 celebration of the explorer's landing in America.
Soon it was Mascagni's turn; his stunning success with Cavalleria Rusticana in 1890
catapulted him to the top of his profession. At the Teatro Costanzi in Rome, he took
twenty-five or thirty curtain calls during the world premiere (but not the sixty he boasted
of). Puccini invited his friendly rival to dinner in his humble Milan lodgings and
congratulated him on his astonishing achievement. Mascagni quickly followed Cavalleria
with works in a different vein, L'Amico Fritz and I Rantzau.
Leoncavallo's brilliant Pagliacci reached the stage in 1892. In that same year, Catalani
reaffirmed his position with La Wally and Franchetti gave his premiere of Cristoforo
Colombo. As a result of all this activity, critics and the public began to take Mascagni,
Leoncavallo and Franchetti very seriously. Puccini had reservations about them all and
felt threatened by them, more or less from 1892 until the end of his life. Even after the
triumph of Manon Lescaut (1893), he remained suspicious and sometimes testy about his
rivals. As late as 1898, by which time both Manon Lescaut and La Bohème had had their
premieres, one critic was asking in print whether Puccini might someday become a
serious rival of Mascagni and Leoncavallo.
77
Puccini's friendship with Leoncavallo ended abruptly in a dispute over rights to Murger's
Scènes de la Vie de Bohème. Leoncavallo had been Puccini's friend for several years and
was the first of several librettists who worked on Puccini's Manon Lescaut. Leoncavallo
had found a powerful patron in the celebrated French baritone Victor Maurel, whom
Verdi had chosen to sing the first Iago in Otello. Maurel had been able to convince Giulio
Ricordi to add Leoncavallo to his roster, so that, in a sense, Puccini and Leoncavallo were
competing under the same roof. Then came the day in 1893 when Leoncavallo told
Puccini that he was writing an opera called La Bohème. Puccini swore that he, too, had
been thinking for two months about writing his own opera on that subject.
A war of words between the two men raged in important Italian newspapers, with each
accusing the other of dishonesty and bad faith. From then on, Puccini's contempt for
Leoncavallo was reflected in letters to and from his closest colleagues, referring to
Leoncavallo, whose surname means, literally, "Lion-Horse," as "Lion-Ass," "Lion-Beast"
and "The Grand-Kaiser." "When I go hunting, if I don't send you a wild boar, I will send
you a Lion or a Horse," Puccini wrote to Illica in 1895. Decades passed before Puccini
and Leoncavallo were reconciled; they met quietly in Viareggio shortly before
Leoncavallo's death.
uccini had a long, convoluted relationship with Franchetti. Puccini was particularly
sensitive to Franchetti's rank, mocking him in letters as "Il Barone" and "Il Baronissimo."
In fact, Puccini had every reason to be jealous; Franchetti's wealth and position gave him
a substantial material advantage. (He was also a very good musician, described by Alvise
Zorzi in Canal Grande as "an extremely cultured and productive composer.") In 1887, as
Franchetti was preparing for the world premiere of his Asrael, Puccini was appealing to
the conductor Luigi Mancinelli for financial support and complaining that he didn't even
have enough money to get through the month.
Franchetti had no such worries. According to the lore of the time, the Franchettis gave
banquets at which the "party favors" were unset diamonds, hidden by the host in the
ladies' napkins. His family owned several residences, including two Gothic Venetian
palaces on the Grand Canal. One was the most famous private house in Venice, the Ca'
d'Oro (House of Gold), which Giorgio Franchetti restored to its former glory with the
help of Gabriele D'Annunzio. In it, he housed his magnificent art collection, which is
open to the public today as a museum.
The other Franchetti palace was the grand mansion next to the Accademia Bridge. At the
end of the last century, the Franchettis asked architect Camillo Boito to restore that
building for them. Because Camillo was the brother of composer Arrigo Boito, a Verdi
librettist, he was part of a network of contacts that helped to advance Franchetti's
theatrical career. In the music business, it was widely rumored that Franchetti used his
wealth to guarantee sumptuous productions of his operas. His social connections may
also explain why Franchetti could engage the celebrated poet D'Annunzio as his librettist,
while Puccini's several attempts to collaborate with D'Annunzio all failed. D'Annunzio
loved power.
78
Puccini and Franchetti were quite close in these early years. Puccini went to hear one of
Franchetti's symphonies and loved it. He also sent his congratulations on Cristoforo
Colombo. But it was hardly a mutual admiration society. When Franchetti aired his
criticisms of Puccini during a dinner at his house, he must have known that gossips would
carry his remarks back to Puccini.
Despite the difference in their social standing, Franchetti and Puccini both worked with
librettist Luigi Illica. The friction between the two composers came to a head over the
question of the rights to Illica's libretto of Tosca. Puccini was the first to express interest
in the subject. After seeing Sardou's play three times when Sarah Bernhardt toured Italy
in the title role, he asked Giulio Ricordi to secure the rights to the drama for him, but
Sardou let Ricordi know that he did not like Puccini's music. Puccini then told Illica that
he was not happy about the project. Sardou later accepted Puccini, but by then, the
situation was changing.
Ricordi had ordered Illica to write the libretto for Tosca, and when the scenario was
finished in January 1894, it went to Franchetti, not Puccini. Illica then began serving two
masters: Puccini for La Bohème, Franchetti for Tosca. All went relatively smoothly at
first, although Illica was having problems with Franchetti, who finally gave up on the
opera. Puccini then decided he could compose Tosca himself, and Ricordi handed the
finished libretto to him. Puccini wrote to a friend on August 9, 1895, and announced, "I
will do Tosca, an extraordinary libretto by Illica, in three acts, [and] Sardou is
enthusiastic about the libretto." There are many conflicting accounts of how Ricordi got
Franchetti to surrender Tosca to Puccini. Some writers say the publisher deceived
Franchetti by telling him that the drama was too violent and coarse to succeed as an
opera, then handed Puccini the libretto that same day. But Franchetti told his children that
he willingly and graciously withdrew in favor of Puccini, saying to Ricordi, "Give it to
Puccini. He has more time than I have."
It was also said that Puccini used part of Franchetti's music for the beginning of the
opera, although that is unlikely. American scholar Deborah Burton, author of the most
recent studies of these accounts, determined that Franchetti stopped working on Tosca
because he was not convinced of its merit and did not, in his words, "feel the music" in
the drama. Yet when the premiere came, at the Teatro Costanzi in Rome in 1900, Ricordi
and others suspected Franchetti, Mascagni, Francesco Cilèa, the "Puccini hater"
Ildebrando Pizzetti and other purported enemies of Puccini of conspiring to stir up
trouble in the audience. In fact, the group went to Rome for the event but apparently bore
no responsibility for the opera's chaotic baptism.
Whatever their professional squabbles, Franchetti and Puccini shared a love of
automobiles, which drew them together just after the turn of the century. In 1900,
Franchetti was elected president of the Italian Automobile Club. He owned a Mercedes
and a Renault and was scouring Europe for a car that could reach fifty-four miles an hour,
in an era when most cars could not go forty. Puccini went to the huge automobile show
that Franchetti mounted in Milan's Public Gardens in 1901. This interest in cars was
nearly the death of Puccini; he emerged from one crash, in 1902, with minor injuries; in
1903, he narrowly escaped death in a second accident. In its wake, Puccini received about
three hundred telegrams of sympathy, but he heard nothing from Franchetti. "Il
79
Baronissimo" had let him down. Franchetti continued to attract the critics' attention with
his operas; in the end he became known as "The Meyerbeer of Italy."
he longest off-and-on friendship of Puccini's life was with Mascagni, the youngest
of the Giovane Scuola. After the tremendous success of Cavalleria, the two remained on
good terms. Mascagni even played in the orchestra on the night of the world premiere of
Puccini's Le Villi. But as Mascagni began to create his own mystique as a significant
composer, a skilled orchestra conductor and Italian patriot, Puccini's feelings toward him
cooled. Mascagni's threat lay in his ability to produce operas regularly, while Puccini was
creating very slowly.
Throughout their careers, the two were composing on not-quite-parallel tracks. Puccini's
Japanese Madama Butterfly followed Mascagni's Japanese Iris. They fought angrily over
I Due Zoccoletti, which Puccini coveted. He won the rights, then discarded it almost at
once. Mascagni finally composed it as Lodoletta. Later, Turandot followed to some
extent the lead Mascagni had taken with Le Maschere in its use of commedia dell'arte
figures.
Puccini's resentment and half-voiced fear of Mascagni lasted until the final years of his
life, when Puccini fought above board and below to win the honored nomination as
Senator of the Kingdom of Italy before Mascagni might be so honored. His political
finagling in Rome did him no credit. Neither did his worry that Mascagni's Il Piccolo
Marat might actually succeed. Puccini milked soprano Gilda Della Rizza for news of the
rehearsals and in the end went to Rome to hear and see the opera for himself. Not
surprisingly, he spoke disparagingly of it. Once again, Puccini's suspicion and animosity
toward his rivals brought a long-term friendship to an end.
MARY JANE PHILLIPS-MATZ is the author of Verdi: A Biography (Oxford) and Rosa
Ponselle, American Diva (Northeastern University Press).
photos: Archivio Storico Ricordi, Milano (Puccini); Opera News Archives (Leoncavallo)
OPERA NEWS, January 2000 Copyright © 2000 The Metropolitan Opera Guild, Inc.
80
Metropolitan Opera facts
Wallace K. Harrison, architect
Cyril Harris, acoustical consultant
This opera house is the 2nd home of the Metropolitan Opera. The 1st was located at
Broadway and 39th St.
The Met’s new home at Lincoln Center cost $49 million to build and construction took 4
years.
The Met is the 2nd-deepest building in Manhattan. It consists of 10 floors: stage level,
six floors above and three below, cushioned with anti-vibration pads for sound-proofing.
The opera season generally runs from September to April, during which time the opera
company puts on 7 performances a week (two on Saturdays) from a repertoire of 21-25
different operas.
The auditorium can seat 3,800 people on five tiers, and there is standing room space for
253 people on various levels.
There are no 90°-angles anywhere in the auditorium, which keeps the sound from
getting lost. The boxes have irregular, shell-patterned decorations for the same reason:
it prevents the sound from being “swallowed” and distributes it evenly throughout the
auditorium.
A single African rosewood tree was used to panel the walls. The tree, brought from
London, was almost 100 ft. long and about 6 feet in diameter.
The ceiling rises 72 feet above the orchestra floor and is covered with over 1 million 2½-inch-square sheets of nearly transparent 23-carat gold leaf. Not only does the gold
add to the glamour of the interior, but it is supposed to eliminate the need for
maintenance and repainting.
If you look up once you leave the auditorium and are in the outer lobbies, you’ll see that
the ceiling has a greenish color. These ceilings are covered with a Dutch alloy which
contains copper, and copper turns green when it tarnishes.
There are two house curtains in the auditorium:
• a guillotine curtain made of gold velour which rises and descends vertically
• a Wagner curtain, conceived by Richard Wagner whose design was first used in
1886 in Bayreuth, Germany. It is a motorized tableau drape with adjustable speed.
• The current curtain, woven of 1,150 yards of gold-patterned Scalamandre silk, was
installed at the Met in 1990 and is the biggest Wagner curtain in the world.
The chandeliers are a gift from the Austrian government. The 1 central chandelier is
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17ft. in diameter and is surrounded by 8 starbursts of varying sizes. The 12 satellite
clusters can be raised to avoid blocking the stage. Altogether, the chandeliers contain
over 3,000 light bulbs.
Does your seat feel a little tighter than last time? Not all the chairs at the Met are the
same size; they vary in width from 19 to 23 inches. The result is staggered seating to
provide the best possible sight lines.
The conductor’s podium is motorized so that it can be adjusted to any height. It is also
equipped with cue lights that indicate when the curtain is ready to rise and a telephone
line to the stage manager’s post and the prompter’s box.
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Glossary:
musical terms and definitions
adagio
Indication that the music is to be performed at a slow, relaxed
pace. A movement for a piece of music with this marking.
allegro
Indicates a fairly fast tempo.
aria
A song for solo voice in an opera, with a clear, formal structure.
arioso
An operatic passage for solo voice, melodic but with no clearly
defined form.
baritone
Man’s voice, with a range between that of bass and tenor.
bel canto
Refers to the style cultivated in the 18th and 19th centuries in
Italian opera. This demanded precise intonation, clarity of tone and
enunciation, and a virtuoso mastery of the most florid passages.
cabaletta
The final short, fast section of a type of aria in 19th-century Italian
opera.
cadenza
A passage in which the solo instrument or voice performs without
the orchestra, usually of an improvisatory nature.
chorus
A body of singers who sing and act as a group, either in unison or in
harmony; any musical number written for such a group.
coloratura
An elaborate and highly ornamented part for soprano voice, usually
written for the upper notes of the voice. The term is also applied to
those singers who specialize in the demanding technique required for
such parts.
conductor
The director of a musical performance for any sizable body of
performers.
contralto
Low-pitched woman’s voice.
crescendo
Means “growing”, used as a musical direction to indicate that the
music is to get gradually louder.
ensemble
From the French word for “together”, this term is used when
discussing the degree of effective teamwork among a body of
performers; in opera, a set piece for a group of soloists.
finale
The final number of an act, when sung by an ensemble
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fortissimo (ff)
Very loud.
forte (f)
Italian for “strong” or “loud”. An indication to perform at a loud
volume.
harmony
A simultaneous sounding of notes that usually serves to support a
melody.
intermezzo
A piece of music played between the acts of an opera.
intermission
A break between the acts of an opera. The lights go on and the
audience is free to move around.
legato
A direction for smooth performance without detached notes.
leitmotif
Melodic element used by Richard Wagner in his operas to musically
represent characters, events, ideas, or emotions in the plot.
libretto
The text of an opera.
maestro
Literally ‘master’; used as a courtesy title for the conductor, whether a
man or woman.
melody
A succession of musical tones (i.e., notes not sounded at the same
time); the horizontal quality of music, often prominent and singable.
mezzo-soprano
Female voice with a range between that of soprano and contralto
opera buffa
An Italian form in which the spoken word is also used, usually on a
comedy theme. The French term “opera bouffe” describes a similar
type, although it may have an explicitly satirical intent.
opera seria
Italian for “serious opera”. Used to signify Italian opera on a heroic or
dramatic theme during the 18th and early 19th centuries.
operetta
A light opera, whether full-length or not, often using spoken dialogue.
The plots are romantic and improbable, even farcical, and the music
tuneful and undemanding.
overture
A piece of music preceding an opera.
pentatonic
scale
Typical of Japanese, Chinese, and other Far Eastern music, the
pentatonic scale divides the octave into five tones and may be
played on the piano by striking only the black keys.
pianissimo (pp) Very softly.
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piano (p)
Meaning “flat”, or “low”. Softly, or quietly.
pitch
The location of a musical sound in the tonal scale; the quality that
makes “A” different from “D”.
prima donna
The leading woman singer in an operatic cast or company.
prelude
A piece of music that precedes another.
recitative
A style of sung declamation used in opera. It may be either
accompanied or unaccompanied except for punctuating chords from
the harpsichord.
reprise
A direct repetition of an earlier section in a piece of music, or the
repeat of a song.
score
The written or printed book containing all the parts of a piece of
music.
serenade
A song by a lover at the window of his mistress.
solo
A part for unaccompanied instrument or for an instrument or voice
with the dominant role in a work.
soprano
The high female voice; the high, often highest, member of a
family of instruments.
tempo
The pace of a piece of music; how fast or how slow it is played.
tenor
A high male voice.
theme
The main idea of a piece of music; analagous to the topic of a written
paper, subject to exploration and changes.
trill
Musical ornament consisting of the rapid alternation between the
note and the note above it.
trio
A sustained musical passage for three voices.
verismo
A type of “realism” in Italian opera during the late 19th and early 20th
centuries, in which the plot was on a contemporary, often violent,
theme.
volume
A description of how loud or soft a sound is.
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