The opening of the Metropolitan Opera's new Manon Lescaut production clearly left some disappointment in its wake on Friday, but that won't always be so.
The updating to Nazi-occupied 1940s France takes some getting used to, with a towering art-nouveau train station in the first act and, in the final one, the wastelands of Louisiana look more like the ruins of Warsaw. The cast was somewhat mis-matched vocally. If you didn't walk in grieving for the absence of the cancelled Jonas Kaufmann, you were by the end. That wasn't necessarily due to his robust replacement Roberto Alagna, but because the program book was full of so many pre-printed stories about the chemistry between Kaufmann and leading soprano Kristine Opolais — a fascinating stage personality whose voice isn't always alluring.
According to the program notes, director Sir Richard Eyre wanted the production to get away from the story's original powdered-wig 18th-century setting if only because those period clothes always look like costumes. Agreed! Putting the opera in 1941 France added an air of corruption and doom to the story of a (somewhat) innocent Manon being torn from her true love, becoming a kept woman and then descending into the dregs where she dies for none of the typically Puccinian noble causes.
The creative team was booed lightly during curtain calls, but I loved Rob Howell's towering set designs. Gracefully sweeping lines often framed the seediest moments, such as the ship dock of Act III with an impressive hull reminding you of those idealized 1930s cruise posters but reincarnated in a rustier twilight realm.
Even with full-throttle vocalism among the cast, the overall operatic package never quite fused. The un-fine line between impressive singing (which was evident) and theatrical sympathy (much less evident) explained why I felt so little for the characters until the final act. Part of the problem is in the opera itself. Unlike Massenet's Manon, there's not much stage time given to the young lovers, des Grieux and Manon, when they are poor and happy. Thus, in the later scenes you never really feel what they've lost. And Eyre's view of the title character wasn't that of an innocent country girl going to the convent but someone who had already been around the block. Again, a shorter and less-interesting theatrical trajectory.
Though known for the Massenet version of the character, Beverly Sills contended that Manon's faithlessness made her all too dislikable and balanced that with a smiling delight of all things new and shiny. For all of her stage savvy, Opolais became unintentionally comic — which might not have happened with a stronger audience alliance — when trying to save her jewels amid her Act III arrest. (Even more odd, some of the jewels resembled Siegfried's magical tarnhelm from Wagner's Ring cycle. But, alas, this adornment didn't give her the power to vanish).
Alagna had learned his role in two weeks for the production, and presented not the slightest lack of confidence. In fact, he sang with emphatic fortissimo as if still in his previous Met assignment, which was Pagliacci. Given the circumstances, he more or less triumphed. But as an artist who is often willing to subvert vocal tone quality for the sake of a realistic characterization, he had little real chest tone to work with in the first two acts. His voice showed a bit of wear from the heavier roles (such as Otello) he has been singing of late. In contrast to Kaufmann, who somehow ignites everything around him, Alagna, now 52, perhaps understandably wasn't very ensemble minded here, and sometimes out sang Opolais, whose best moments were in her beautifully controlled soft singing.
Where production and performance triumphed was in the final act — one of the trickiest in Puccini operas. It can seem like a dreary postscript as des Grieux and Manon stumble around the badlands half dead, in one of the quieter death scenes the composer ever wrote.
From the opening moments, though, conductor Fabio Luisi consistently commanded the score with unerring vision. He surpassed himself with his penetrating treatment of the opening orchestral flourish and followed with a particularly terrifying shiver in the strings, achieved by bowing close to the bridges of the instruments. The music was so taut, purposeful and steeped in tragedy that this troublesome fourth act actually redeemed much of what had been previously disappointing. Opolais and Alagna found more vocal color and used it with expressive precision — which is perhaps the watchword with Luisi's approach to Puccini. It has a dry-eyed dignity that draws you in close, the reward being many musico-dramatic details. Orchestrally speaking, this was one of the best-studied, most handsomely executed performances of this opera that I've ever heard.