Manon Lescaut

Deutsche Oper Berlin, Berlin, Germany
All photos (7)
Thursday 11 May 2023

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Important Info
Type: Opera
City: Berlin, Germany
Starts at: 19:30
Overview

„What use do I have for heroes or immortal beings? I feel uneasy in such an environment. I am no musician for the grand occasion. My feel is for the small things in life; I only love to explore small things. That is why I liked Manon. She was all heart, nothing more, nothing less...“ [Giacomo Puccini]

MANON LESCAUT was Puccini's first major success as a composer of opera. As with his later international successes, the story revolves around a woman. Manon, Mimì, Tosca, even Minnie, the „girl from the Golden West" - such a confident practitioner with both colt and prayer book - and of course Liù in TURANDOT… all belong in this gallery of exceptional women whose delicacy and fragility are only surpassed by their single-mindedness and their absolute dedication to their love. And all are interesting insofar as they are can never be viewed simplistically as either perpetrators or victims, not even Cio-Cio-San, who in the end decides her own fate. They follow their hearts but without grand gestures or empty pathos. Perhaps it is this straightforwardness of action that made them attractive to Puccini, a straightforwardness that corresponded to his ideal of simplicity. Heroines in the classical sense they are not, these Puccini women; nor are they, in any sense of the word, angelic.

The young, attractive Manon, who deserts her lover Des Grieux without hesitation for a life with the wealthy but unloved Geronte, has a weakness for luxurious distractions to such an extent that she sacrifices her personal happiness, even her life, to her lust for pleasure. Even after her decision to return to Des Grieux she does not wish to relinquish her hold on the soporific security of material comfort. With the police, summoned by Geronte, on their way to the house, Manon might have managed to evade arrest and subsequent deportation had she not tarried to pack her jewellery.

Abbé Antoine François Prévost, whose novel „The Tale of the Chevalier Des Grieux and Manon Lescaut“ was Puccini's source, had given a precise description of Manon's „peculiar“ character: „There never was a girl who was less drawn towards money, but the thought never left her that she might become poor. She was in need of pleasure and distraction; had it been possible for her to amuse herself without spending money, she would have never touched a single sou.“ The young woman is surprisingly unscrupulous in the way she achieves her goals, but this does not diminish her charm in the eyes of her lovers, or for that matter, the composer. Passionate feelings, strong contrasts, a wholly unsentimental perspective on flesh-and-blood characters, their weaknesses and their suffering at the hands of despotism and social repression – Puccini's opera creates a fascinating spectrum of colours and moods.

The task he had set himself was a stiff one. He had chosen a subject that had been used on several occasions in the past, and had to bear comparison with the likes of Jules Massenet, whose MANON premiered to great acclaim in 1884. While working with his many librettists (the text mentions as many as seven authors) he intentionally avoided any parallels with Massenet. Indeed both works could not be more different. As Puccini himself once said: „Massenet feels it as a Frenchman, with powder and minuets. I shall feel it as an Italian, with a desperate passion.“ These qualities together with a stiff pinch of realism have forged from the material the sympathetic and, in the end, very moving story of a magnetic woman with a mind of her own, not a heroine, but „all heart“.

History
Premiere of this production: 01 February 1893, Teatro Regio, Turin

Manon Lescaut is an opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini, composed between 1890 and 1893. The story is based on the 1731 novel L'histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost. In 1884 an opera by Jules Massenet entitled Manon, and based on the same novel, was premiered and has also become popular.

Venue Info

Deutsche Oper Berlin - Berlin
Location   Bismarckstraße 35

Venue's Capacity: 1698

The Deutsche Oper Berlin is an opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Germany. The resident building is the country's second-largest opera house and also home to the Berlin State Ballet. Since 2004 the Deutsche Oper Berlin, like the Staatsoper Unter den Linden (Berlin State Opera), the Komische Oper Berlin, the Berlin State Ballet, and the Bühnenservice Berlin (Stage and Costume Design), has been a member of the Berlin Opera Foundation.

The company's history goes back to the Deutsches Opernhaus built by the then independent city of Charlottenburg—the "richest town of Prussia"—according to plans designed by Heinrich Seeling from 1911. It opened on November 7, 1912 with a performance of Beethoven's Fidelio, conducted by Ignatz Waghalter. In 1925, after the incorporation of Charlottenburg by the 1920 Greater Berlin Act, the name of the resident building was changed to Städtische Oper (Municipal Opera).

With the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, the opera was under control of the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Minister Joseph Goebbels had the name changed back to Deutsches Opernhaus, competing with the Berlin State Opera in Mitte controlled by his rival, the Prussian minister-president Hermann Göring. In 1935, the building was remodeled by Paul Baumgarten and the seating reduced from 2300 to 2098. Carl Ebert, the pre-World War II general manager, chose to emigrate from Germany rather than endorse the Nazi view of music, and went on to co-found the Glyndebourne opera festival in England. He was replaced by Max von Schillings, who acceded to enact works of "unalloyed German character". Several artists, like the conductor Fritz Stiedry and the singer Alexander Kipnis, followed Ebert into emigration. The opera house was destroyed by a RAF air raid on 23 November 1943. Performances continued at the Admiralspalast in Mitte until 1945. Ebert returned as general manager after the war.

After the war, in what was now West Berlin, the company, again called Städtische Oper, used the nearby Theater des Westens; its opening production was Fidelio, on 4 September 1945. Its home was finally rebuilt in 1961 but to a much-changed, sober design by Fritz Bornemann. The opening production of the newly named Deutsche Oper, on 24 September, was Mozart's Don Giovanni.

Past Generalmusikdirektoren (GMD, general music directors) have included Bruno Walter, Kurt Adler, Ferenc Fricsay, Lorin Maazel, Gerd Albrecht, Jesús López-Cobos, and Christian Thielemann. In October 2005, the Italian conductor Renato Palumbo was appointed GMD as of the 2006/2007 season. In October 2007, the Deutsche Oper announced the appointment of Donald Runnicles as their next Generalmusikdirektor, effective August 2009, for an initial contract of five years. Simultaneously, Palumbo and the Deutsche Oper mutually agreed to terminate his contract, effective November 2007.

On the evening of 2 June 1967, Benno Ohnesorg, a student taking part in the German student movement, was shot in the streets around the opera house. He had been protesting against the visit to Germany by the Shah of Iran, who was attending a performance of Mozart's The Magic Flute.

In 1986 the American Berlin Opera Foundation was founded.

In April 2001, the Italian conductor Giuseppe Sinopoli died at the podium while conducting Verdi's Aida, at age 54.

In September 2006, the Deutsche Oper's Intendantin (general manager) Kirsten Harms drew criticism after she cancelled the production of Mozart's opera Idomeneo by Hans Neuenfels, because of fears that a scene in it featuring the severed heads of Jesus, Buddha and Muhammad would offend Muslims, and that the opera house's security might come under threat if violent protests took place. Critics of the decision include German Ministers and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel. The reaction from Muslims has been mixed — the leader of Germany's Islamic Council welcomed the decision, whilst a leader of Germany's Turkish community, criticising the decision, said:

This is about art, not about politics ... We should not make art dependent on religion — then we are back in the Middle Ages.

At the end of October 2006, the opera house announced that performances of Mozart's opera Idomeneo would then proceed. Kirsten Harms, after announcing in 2009 that she would not renew her contract beyond 2011, was bid farewell in July of that year.

Important Info
Type: Opera
City: Berlin, Germany
Starts at: 19:30