English Touring Opera brought Puccini to the Theatre Royal on Monday; Manon Lescaut was the composer’s first critical success, written when he was in his early thirties.
English Touring Opera performing Manon Lescaut | Photo © Richard Hubert Smith
It is not yet a convincing masterpiece like Tosca or Madam Butterfly, but the hallmarks are there, with gorgeous expressive orchestral writing and plum roles for soprano and tenor.
ETO’s compact orchestra under Gerry Cornelius certainly delivered, as did the hard-working chorus.
Jenny Stafford as Manon sang powerfully in the high register, but for sheer vocal quality and Italianate sound Gareth Dafydd Morris stole the show as Des Grieux.
A feast for the ears, then; but what did we see? A classic piece of ‘director’s theatre’ that hi-jacked Puccini’s work. Without reading Jude Christian’s programme notes the audience must have been baffled: she is billed as ‘director and librettist’ and has rewritten the text to fit her agenda.
Starting from a feeling of outrage at misogyny and violence against women, she states ‘this opera reads to me like a surreal nightmare, and so that’s how I’ve chosen to stage it’.
Visually it’s a kaleidoscope, and the ‘zany’ ensemble intrudes throughout to undercut the action, as if they’ve strayed in from the commedia dell’arte or ETO’s own ‘Rake’s Progress’.
As a result, Christian fails to deliver her own message, while at the same time thwarting Puccini’s intentions.
The presence of a massive Jeff Koons-style black-and-gold pug backdrop and a final unexplained appearance of the chorus leave us unable to empathise with the touching final scene.
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
Reviewer: Niall Hoskin
