Manon Lescaut (Puccini) - Teatro Regio di Torino (2024) - Manon Lescaut (Puccini) - 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 at almost the same time - all three inspired by the novel Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by Antoine-François Prévost, and staged in three brand new productions by director Arnaud Bernard.

In Puccini's opera, Manon is ‘a femme fatale, madly in love both with the student Des Grieux and with luxury’. The composer turned it into an ‘Italian-style drama, driven by a desperate passion’. ‘The work takes us from the initial idyll, which shows a couple falling in love amidst choruses of young people singing of youth and love, to the sumptuous Parisian flat where Manon, maintained by Géronte, spends her time between balls and courtiers, and then we find the young woman in chains, condemned to exile in America for prostitution. Only a famous and poignant symphonic interlude offers a little respite before the tragic finale.

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