Our second look at the story of Manon Lescaut continues from the Teatro Regio on this week’s Sunday Opera (8/3 3:00 p.m.) with Massanet’s treatment of the story by Antoine Prevost. In this one, Manon doesn’t die in the wilderness or desert of Louisiana, she dies of exhaustion on the road to Le Havre to be deported.
Once again, Manon (Ekaterina Bakanova) is a naïve young girl who is on her way to the convent. She’s met by her cousin, Lescaut (Bjorn Burger) as she arrives at Amiens. She never travels further because she sees and immediately falls in love with de Grieux (Atalla Ayan), and when de Grieux writes to his father, the count (Roberto Scanduizzi), de Grieux enlists the help of de Bretigny (Allen Boxer) to abduct his son to make sure that the wedding won’t take place. Manon falls into the clutches of de Bretigny which is eventually the cause of her downfall, being deported as a woman of “Ill-fame.”
Joining them in this cast are Thomas Morris, Olivia Doray, Marie Kalinine, and Lilia Istrali. Evelino Pido leads the Teatro Regio Chorus and Orchestra.
We’ve scheduled more music of Massenet after the opera including his rarely heard Suite No. 1 (which is really his Suite No. 2) as well as another of his numbered suites the Suite No. 6: Scenes de feerie, both played by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra conducted by Jean-Yves Ossonce. We’ll finish our time together with the ballet from another of his more famous operas, “Thais,” performed by the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields with Neville Marriner conducting.
