Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" was his first opera blockbuster. It proved enormously popular at its premiere in Turin in 1893. It got far better reviews, in fact, than did its successor, "La Boheme."
Yet "Boheme" is everywhere today while it is easy for devoted opera lovers to have missed seeing "Manon Lescaut."
One reason is the opera is difficult to cast, said director Bernard Uzan, who created the 1998 L'Opera de Montreal production that Opera Pacific is presenting tonight through Sunday at the Orange County Performing Arts Center in Costa Mesa.
"Vocally, the part of Des Grieux [Manon's young lover, sung by Hugh Smith in this production] is a monster. The part lies so high. It's always in the passaggio [the break between registers in the voice]. The tessitura is always almost at the edge of crumbling.
"Manon [Sylvie Valayre], is also very difficult vocally. It's a lot of singing. It puts an enormous demand on the vocal cords. I don't mean to use the word 'screaming,' but it's almost that."
Puccini's opera and Jules Massenet's very popular (1884) "Manon" derive from the same source--Abbe Prevost's "L'Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut," the story of a beautiful young girl who, torn between love and money, chooses money and slowly comes to regret it.
Uzan, who has directed both operas, calls Puccini's version "more concise' than Massenet's popular work.
It's also closer to the novel, he adds. And to understand Manon's character, Uzan says it is necessary to go back to the source.
"Manon does not really exist by herself in the novel. The main character is the Chevalier des Grieux. It's actually a tale told by a man who meets a man who tells the story of a friend who told him about a woman he knew . . .
Uzan tries to direct the leading lady to emphasize the character's spontaneity.
"She's genuinely in love with Des Grieux, but essentially, she's also in love with money. Every second, she's totally herself. But to be totally herself is to be totally diverse. That's why she falls. She cannot resist an appetite for everything."
Audiences tend to forgive Manon, Uzan said. But Des Grieux, is a less sympathetic character.
"In the novel he kills somebody, but makes an excuse for it. 'I didn't know that the pistol was loaded.' "
As in most of his operas, Puccini is far more interested in the women than the men.
