# Massenet Monon Met broadcast



## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Anyone see the Met broadcast of Manon in cinemas last night? I did and thought it was stunning. Any thoughts?


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## nina foresti (Mar 11, 2014)

Totally agree.
Fabiano, sometimes off his game, was having a great day and the audience let him know it.
Oropesa was outstanding in a role that is probably one of the most difficult to portray. They loved her.
My only problem was with some of the silly staging choices. That bed in the St. Sulpice scene being directly behind the church pulpit was ridiculous and annoying to say the least.
I will be seeing live, later in the season, Puccini's _Manon Lescaut_. It will be interesting to compare the differences between Massanet's _Manon_ and Puccini's work.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

nina foresti said:


> Totally agree.
> Fabiano, sometimes off his game, was having a great day and the audience let him know it.
> Oropesa was outstanding in a role that is probably one of the most difficult to portray. They loved her.
> My only problem was with some of the silly staging choices. That bed in the St. Sulpice scene being directly behind the church pulpit was ridiculous and annoying to say the least.
> I will be seeing live, later in the season, Puccini's _Manon Lescaut_. It will be interesting to compare the differences between Massanet's _Manon_ and Puccini's work.


Agree with this though did not find the stage designs as off-putting as yourself as the production was somewhat stylised. But the two principles were outstanding and it was good, from the dramatic point of view, to see a heroine who looked and acted the part as well as she sang the part. You could fall in love with her yourself!


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

nina foresti said:


> Totally agree.
> Fabiano, sometimes off his game, was having a great day and the audience let him know it.
> Oropesa was outstanding in a role that is probably one of the most difficult to portray. They loved her.
> My only problem was with some of the silly staging choices. That bed in the St. Sulpice scene being directly behind the church pulpit was ridiculous and annoying to say the least.
> I will be seeing live, later in the season, Puccini's _Manon Lescaut_. * It will be interesting to compare the differences between Massanet's Manon and Puccini's work.*


The excerpts from both operas recorded by Anna Moffo in the 1960s are interesting for making this comparison (Labo is her partner in the Puccini, di Stefano in the Massenet)


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

nina foresti said:


> I will be seeing live, later in the season, Puccini's _Manon Lescaut_. It will be interesting to compare the differences between Massanet's _Manon_ and Puccini's work.


As a more fiathful rendering of L'Abbé Prévost's novel, I've always preferred the Massenet, which captures to perfection the brittle glitter of the French court and in which Manon is closer to the character Prévost paints in the novel, a flighty but affectionate girl with a capacity for love, who is undone by her equal love of luxury. In many ways she is a victim of her own personality, and she drags poor Des Grieux down with her. Sir Thomas Beecham one said he would happily give all the Brandenburg Concertos for *Manon* and feel he had profited in the exchange, and a good performance can make you feel precisely that.

The Puccini opera is an early work, the first in which he made his mark, and his grasp of dramatic structure is not what it was to become. Furthermore he makes Manon into one of his passive victims, like Mimi, Butterfly, Liu, Angelica and, to a lesser extent, Tosca, which perhaps makes her a more sympathetic heroine, but isn't the original character. It has its moments, well quite a few of them actually, but doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts. Puccini's next opera was *La Bohême* in which he shows he has learned quite a lot since writing *Manon Lescaut*.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Tsaraslondon said:


> As a more fiathful rendering of L'Abbé Prévost's novel, I've always preferred the Massenet, which captures to perfection the brittle glitter of the French court and in which Manon is closer to the character Prévost paints in the novel, a flighty but affectionate girl with a capacity for love, who is undone by her equal love of luxury. In many ways she is a victim of her own personality, and she drags poor Des Grieux down with her. *Sir Thomas Beecham one said he would happily give all the Brandenburg Concertos for Manon and feel he had profited in the exchange, and a good performance can make you feel precisely that.*
> 
> .


As Beecham didn't care for Bach - 'Too much counterpoint and Protestant counterpoint at that' - his comparison is hardly flattering for Massenet. Just one of those statements which in hindsight makes Sir Tommy look rather foolish, comparing chalk with cheese. It was the first time I had heard or seen Manon and I thoroughly enjoyed it own spite of the fact that the work is somewhat overlong and the fact that Massenet begins with a comedy and ends in tragedy. But I thought the production pulled it off pretty well.


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## Tsaraslondon (Nov 7, 2013)

DavidA said:


> As Beecham didn't care for Bach - 'Too much counterpoint and Protestant counterpoint at that' - his comparison is hardly flattering for Massenet. Just one of those statements which in hindsight makes Sir Tommy look rather foolish, comparing chalk with cheese. It was the first time I had heard or seen Manon and I thoroughly enjoyed it own spite of the fact that the work is somewhat overlong and the fact that Massenet begins with a comedy and ends in tragedy. But I thought the production pulled it off pretty well.


I think you'll find that Massenet and his librettists just followed the novel, which also starts with comedy and ends with tragedy. Maybe you expected them to change the ending to make it into a jolly romp.

Incidentally, why pour scorn on Beecham's only half serious quote? The fact is he adored the opera and that was his way of saying so.


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

Tsaraslondon said:


> I think you'll find that Massenet and his librettists just followed the novel, which also starts with comedy and ends with tragedy. Maybe you expected them to change the ending to make it into a jolly romp.
> 
> Incidentally, why pour scorn on Beecham's only half serious quote? The fact is he adored the opera and that was his way of saying so.


It shows the esteem he thought the opera deserved. I really enjoy his humour.

Beecham loved the French repertoire, he quipped "I prefer Offenbach to Bach often" 

When it came to casting, Beecham chose Bidu Sayao at his Met broadcast...now over 75 years ago. I wish _it_ was in HD!




There is one singer who definitely would not have essayed the Puccini version.


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Revitalized Classics said:


> *It shows the esteem he thought the opera deserved*. I really enjoy his humour.
> 
> Beecham loved the French repertoire, he quipped "I prefer Offenbach to Bach often"
> 
> ...


No it didn't. It just showed how he liked to wind up the musical establishment. He was a great conductor but a pretty awful man by all accounts when you read his biography. But that doesn't exactly make him unique among conductors of his generation! :lol:


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## Revitalized Classics (Oct 31, 2018)

DavidA said:


> No it didn't. It *just* showed how he liked to wind up the musical establishment. He was a great conductor but a pretty awful man by all accounts when you read his biography. But that doesn't exactly make him unique among conductors of his generation! :lol:


"I would give the whole of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos for Massenet's _Manon_, and would think I had vastly profited by the exchange."

If it was intended as a backhanded compliment I'm not seeing it that way.

There would be a stronger case for it *just* being snide if the rest of his career wasn't one long advocacy for French music.


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## Woodduck (Mar 17, 2014)

Revitalized Classics said:


> Beecham chose Bidu Sayao at his Met broadcast...now over 75 years ago. I wish _it_ was in HD!
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Sayao was a soprano of exquisite charm, vocally and visually. Her Manon must have been Massenet's dream come true. Here she is with Tito Schipa in 1939:






What a joy to hear such idiomatic performances and such beautifully functioning voices! Not a wobble in sight...


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## DavidA (Dec 14, 2012)

Revitalized Classics said:


> "I would give the whole of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos for Massenet's _Manon_, and would think I had vastly profited by the exchange."
> 
> If it was intended as a backhanded compliment I'm not seeing it that way.
> 
> *There would be a stronger case for it just being snide if the rest of his career wasn't one long advocacy for French music.*


But Beecham was full of just jibes. He called Beethoven's 7th "A lot of Yacks jumping around!" He didn't expect to be taken too seriously. They were windups. You can read them in John Lucas' biography which is on my shelves. I mean, 'No operatic star has yet died soon enough for me.' They were mischievous quips.


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