Manon Lescaut (Auber) - Teatro Regio di Torino (2024) - Manon Lescaut (Auber) - Teatro Regio di Torino (2024)

Description

Turin's Teatro Regio has come up with a ‘triple Manon’, inviting audiences to see Puccini's Manon Lescaut, Massenet's Manon and Auber's Manon Lescaut almost simultaneously - all three inspired by the novel Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut by Antoine-François Prévost, and staged in three brand new productions by director Arnaud Bernard.

Less well known than its counterparts, Daniel François Esprit Auber and playwright Eugène Scribe's Manon Lescaut was nevertheless a great success when it premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1856 - not least because of its bravura arias for coloratura soprano. To better meet the requirements of the Opéra-Comique, Auber and Scribe turned their Manon into a frivolous young girl, sincerely in love with Des Grieux but so unlucky that she always finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time. The duo nevertheless break free from some of the codes of comic opera of the period to better respect the plot of Abbé Prévost's novel: Manon, condemned to exile, dies of exhaustion in the desert, imposing an unusual tragic ending on the Opéra-Comique stage.

Further information is available on the Opera's official website.