Work in progress

London
Coliseum
09/22/00
Giacomo Puccini <I>Manon Lescaut</I>
Nina Stemme (Manon Lescaut), David Kempster (Lescaut), Chevalier des Grieux
(Martin Thompson), Mark Richardson (Geronte de Revoir), John Graham-Hall
(Edmondo)
ENO Chorus, ENO Orchestra
Paul Daniel (conductor) Keith Warner (director)

The autumn segment of the ENO‘s 2000-2001 season, a “celebration of Italian
opera“, includes a range of works, almost all new to the company, presented
on a fixed set designed by Stephanos Lazaridis in productions that might be
co-ordinated. (Opera North had a similar, shorter season last year,
possibly also planned by Nicholas Payne.) Lazaridis’ set uses scaffolding
to reshape the auditorium, as an allusion to the incipient rebuilding work
and as a reminder that every production, and every genre and tradition, is
always under construction.

It’s an ingenious mix of experiment and audience appeal. “Italian opera”
should put fundaments in the stalls. But the most familiar works in the
season are <I>The coronation of Poppea</I> and <I>Nabucco</I>, and some
punters who buy tickets for <I>La Bohème</I> might be miffed to find that
it is Leoncavallo’s.

Reassuringly, the season opens with Puccini’s <I>Manon Lescaut</I>, whose
similarity to <I>La Bohème</I> should make up for its rarity and justify
its extended run of performances. Of course it’s not particularly Italian,
since it’s based on a French novel and is a deliberate negative of
Massenet’s <I>Manon</I> (to the extent that there is no love scene between
the hero and heroine, let alone the conversion in St Sulpice or the lovers’
garret). And it’s formally designed, going on symphonic, in a decidedly
cerebral and German style.

Keith Warner‘s production, however, creates a perverse carnival world, with
vaguely Venetian costumes, in which Edmondo, the student madrigalist, is a
sinister stage manager of a commedia dell‘arte. Manon is a Lulu-ish
Columbine, coquettish in response to abuse, and Geronte is pure Pantaloon.
The chorus, looking down on the action from a platform that extends round
the dress circle, is generally the cruel audience of the masquerade.

Making Edmondo into a pimp-director in the opening scene undermines our
sense of Manon’s decline and corruption. Although dressed in blue as a
Watteau shepherdess, she is already on display and implicitly up for sale
in this first scene, which makes it less of a shock when her brother
effectively sells her to Geronte, and the red dress that she wears for
Geronte seems inevitable. But the whole setting is interestingly sleazy and
disturbing, and highlights the misogyny of the plot itself, a woman
destroyed so that des Grieux love and lose a slut according to the literary
convention.

If the music isn‘t prime lush Puccini, Paul Daniel and the ENO orchestra
kept it interesting and engaging throughout. The singers seemed less at
ease, apart from John Graham-Hall, wonderfully disgusting in the synthetic,
production-created role of the stage manager. David Kempster looked heavy
enough but sounded perversely lyrical and attractive as Lescaut. Mark
Richardson also looked the character but couldn’t make much of the
cardboard cut-out Geronte. As the lovers, Nina Stemme and Martin Thompson
had all the notes but didn’t generate much heat or sympathy. This wasn’t
necessarily their fault. Manon Lescaut, like <I>The rake’s progress</I>, is
probably too chilly to create sparks without a lot of effort.

H.E. Elsom