Opera Company's "Manon Lescaut'

The best thing about the Opera Company's Manon Lescaut was Michelle Johnson in the title role— which is saying a lot, because the production was clever and attractive in many ways.

Johnson is still a student (a so-called "resident artist") at the Academy of Vocal Arts. She has been impressive in Verdi's Falstaff, Verdi's Oberto and Puccini's Suor Angelica. But this role taxes the abilities of seasoned professionals to a much greater extent.

Vocally, Manon needs to sing the plaintive arias for which Puccini is famous, plus trills and high passages that aren't present in other Puccini scores, as well as some heavy dramatic singing beyond anything demanded for Mimi or Madame Butterfly. This heroine must progress dramatically from an innocent to a pampered call girl, then a convicted felon who is deported to Louisiana and dies.

Johnson had just three weeks to learn this role and rehearse it after Ermonela Jaho withdrew from her announced assignment. Johnson carried it off with no appearance of effort. She seemed to inhabit the role, and her voice floated splendidly.

Puccini vs. Massenet

That being said, Puccini's version of the life of Manon Lescaut is less varied, and less dramatically challenging, than the earlier rendering by Jules Massenet.

In Massenet's adaptation of the Abbé Prévost novel, which I caught at the Met last month (click here for my review), the protagonist is portrayed as a naive 15-year-old stepping off a carriage bound for a convent to live instead with the youthful Des Grieux in a modest Paris apartment. Puccini skips all that, introducing us to Manon at a fancy ball, and in the next scene he shows her as the kept woman of the wealthy Brétigny. So his version provides much less in the way of variety and dramatic arc. Puccini also eliminated a powerful scene where Manon seduces Des Grieux in a church.

Why, then, do so many opera fans prefer the Puccini? Mostly because Puccini emphasized the love story of Manon and the young chevalier and gave them more arias and duets of sentimentality and extroverted passion.

Price of vanity

Johnson was a visual knockout from her first appearance in a robin's egg silk dupioni with a corseted bodice and a full skirt. She looked not at all like a schoolgirl on her way to a convent, but that wasn't what was called for in this version.

In the second act, in Brétigny's palace, she wore a tall wig and a peach gown with gold floral embroidery and flounced sleeves and was a vain show-off, just as she's supposed to be. (Millie Hiibel created the luxurious costumes.) Her narcissism impelled her to linger too long in her bedroom, gathering her jewelry, so she was arrested before she could leave.

Her love interest was played by the Brazilian tenor, Thiago Arancam, who looked handsome but lacked Johnson's vocal allure. He used a tight-throated method— called pharyngeal singing— that puts pressure on every phrase, thus conveying a constant sense of hard work and no relaxation. It reminded me of the fad of vocal "fry" favored by many young women when they speak, which produces a metallically grating sound.

Troy Cook as Manon's brother, and Daniel Mobbs as her super-rich patron, acted and sang superbly. Corrado Rovaris conducted with suitably broad tempi.

The production was designed by John Pasco for the Washington National Opera. One of its nice touches was the projection of pages from a book, presumably from Prévost's novel, setting the scenes.