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JULES MASSENET

MANON

SYNOPSIS The wealthy Guillot de Morfontaine, the farmer-general Brétigny and their female companions Poussette, Javotte und Rosette are enjoying themselves in a tavern at a staging post in Amiens. The approach of a group of travellers is announced, and curious townsfolk gather to watch them, amongst them Sergeant Lescaut, who has come to meet his cousin Manon to take her to a convent. The young Manon is indeed amongst the new arrivals, enchanting all the bystanders – including Guillot – with her beauty. The latter offers her a life of luxury if she will become his mistress. Though Manon rejects his advances, she feels irresistibly attracted by the prospect of wealth. Chevalier Des Grieux also arrives on the scene. Hardly has the young noblemen set eyes on the young girl than he, too, falls in love with her completely. Manon is also attracted to him, and agrees to flee to Paris with him. However, the time which the young lovers spend with one another is all too short, as Manon finally gives in to the advances of the wealthy Brétigny. Chevalier Des Grieux is forcefully abducted at the instigation of his father, the old Count Des Grieux, who wishes to put his son back on the straight and narrow. Some time later, Manon chances to hear that the young Des Grieux is about to take holy orders. She immediately goes to visit him at the monastery of Saint-Sulpice. It only takes a few tender words from Manon for Des Grieux to succumb to her charms: once again the couple flee together. Since Manon is still unwilling to do without her luxury, Des Grieux endeavours to improve his financial circumstances by gambling at the sleazy Hôtel de Transylvanie. Guillot sees him there and drums up a scandal, accusing Des Grieux of cheating. He fetches the police, and both Manon and Des Grieux are arrested. Though Count Des Grieux is able to secure the release of his son, Manon is to be deported to America. However, worn down by the exertions of prison life, Manon dies in Des Grieuxʼs arms on the way to the harbour.

KS ANNA NETREBKO as MANON Previous pages: SCENE

ANDREAS LÁNG

BETWEEN MYTH AND REALITY THE CREATION OF JULES MASSENET’S MANON Using an autobiographical piece as a source for research can be a problem – particularly if it’s by an artist. There is the obvious danger that they will use their recollections – consciously or unconsciously – for additional PR for their work or to bolster personal fame. A familiar example of this is Richard Wagner. But Jules Massenet, the major French opera composer of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, provided us in Mes Souvenirs with an easily readable, chatty look at his life and work which is definitely highly embroidered and often probably lapses into anecdote. However, if we are aware of this and ready to read between the lines, Massenet’s autobiography offers much interesting and usable material, particularly with regard to the origins of his operas. For example, he describes in considerable detail the development of his seventh and most successful to date opera, Manon. According to this, Léon Carvalho, the feared director of the Paris Opéra Comique, commissioned him to compose a three-act work with the title Phoebé. But as Massenet him-

self tells it, he was gripped in connection with the piece by the fear of every creative person of suddenly hitting a creative crisis. Although the libretto was by no lesser person than Henri Meilhac – co-author of the libretto for Carmen and many Offenbach operettas – Massenet was not feeling musically inspired. The more he looked at the material, the more convinced he was that he would fail. A perfectionist, as his contemporaries portrayed him, he was not willing to accept this situation for long, and became more and more annoyed as the days passed, until he admitted his current artistic impotence, rushed directly to Meilhac’s home and confessed his musical capitulation. So far, so credible. The account in the autobiography of the subsequent conversation with Meilhac should, however, essentially be relegated to the stuff of legend. Massenet claimed he met the librettist in his impressive library, and accidentally happened on Abbé Prévost’s novel Manon Lescaut there. He exclaimed “Manon!”, startling the librettist with the subse-

BETWEEN MYTH AND REALITY

quent illumination that this was the material Massenet wanted to set. He claimed that the decision to call the opera Manon instead of the full title Manon Lescaut was made at the same moment, as a sudden inspiration. As if this was not enough, Massenet also presents Meilhac’s skills in a positively supernatural light. He claimed that Meilhac had invited him to dinner the very next night, and playfully passed the first two completed acts of the Manon libretto to him under his napkin. The other three acts arrived a few days later. The fact that none of this can have happened in this way is clear if we read the chapter on Werther. There we find again a similarly miraculous sudden inspiration, which seems to prompt Massenet to compose. In this case, however, there are fortunately other and more credible contemporary sources which clearly refute the lightning inspiration in Massenet’s version. But back to Manon. In the episode described above, Massenet uses two twists which are frequently and gladly used in connection with artistic creations. The first is the emphasis on destiny. At the moment of greatest despair – Massenet is not able to set the three-acter Phoebé – the work which is actually to be created appears in the composer’s mind out of a clear blue sky, completely unplanned. In the librettist’s library, Massenet’s wandering gaze accidentally falls on the right book’s spine, labelled Manon Lescaut, for it to fan the dormant fires of inspiration to an instant blaze... Second, it is naturally immediately obvious to the composer that this inspiration can only flourish if the opera’s right title accompanies the work’s creation from the start as its

muse. In this case, shortening Manon Lescaut to Manon. But how did this Manon, this major French opera from the second half of the 19th century, really come about? While it is not possible to reconstruct the process of creation with complete certainty, there are several facts to help us which are easily overlooked at first glance. Prévost’s 18th century novel was very popular from the start. And Massenet was also not the first or last to set it. Before him, there were Michael William Balfe (The Maid of Artois, London 1836), Daniel-François-Esprit Auber (Manon Lescaut, Paris 1856), Richard Kleinmichel (Schloss de LʼOrme, Hamburg 1883) and Jacques-François-Fromental Halévy and Mathias Strebinger, each of whom wrote a Manon Lescaut ballet. Massenet will have known at least Auber’s version, as Auber as the “inventor” of grand opéra was a model for several generations of composers and also director for years of the famous Paris Conservatory, who Massenet as a former student had some contact with. Simply to make an obvious distinction with his own opera, which was intended to première in the same city (Paris) as Auber’s, it was naturally advisable to choose a different title. First, it had to be clear to the public that this was a new work, and second, it should still be clear that it was about the popular Manon story. (Conversely, it was for the same reasons that Puccini had given his version premièred in 1893 the full title Manon Lescaut, to distinguish it clearly from the successful Massenet version.) In addition, at the time a simple woman’s forename had greater public impact than any other form of title. For example, Verdi’s La traviata was called

MARIA PUBLIG

MANON – A CRAVING FOR LIFE Jules Massenet was already famous when he started working on his new opera Manon in 1881. Unlike Puccini and his Manon Lescaut, which premièred in 1893, Massenet and his librettist Meilhac stayed with the story by the Abbé Prévost. This was no contemporary novel, but a cult piece which appeared in 1731 and had fascinated generations of readers. The mood swings between duty and inclination, asceticism and licentiousness had been a source of fascination and moralisation for over a century. At the start of the 18th century, the idea that a young woman (Manon is just 16 in Prévost’s novel) saw her life stretching before her, didn’t want to wait to be married off by her family, and abandoned herself to the feelings of the moment was utterly reprehensible. Many were disturbed by the fact that she added the pursuit of wealth and luxury to her actions, and that Manon linked this careless, free lifestyle with physical passion, which was unknown to most married women at the time.

GLAMOROUS WORLD Today, we are relatively at ease with it all, although many now complain about oversexualisation. The spirit of the times creates models, cult figures, highly egocentric people. In their striving for beauty, success and impact, many girls are drawn by advertising and the equivalent media to cosmetics, fashion and a lifestyle well beyond their actual financial resources, so that Manon’s earlier longings are very understandable, from our current point of view. The difference is that she could possibly afford this today by working, but in those days needed a wealthy husband – and this is exactly what the young Manon lacked. In her hunger for the glamorous world, Manon with her longing for life did not stop at taking significantly older lovers, who would at least satisfy her financial desires. After all, she had something to offer them. Manon was unconcerned about the moral price. There are parallels again for the present day. Not

M A N ON – A C R AV I N G F OR L I F E

too long ago (after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989), there were hordes of teenage girls waiting on the streets for their financial fortune from the West, for example at the Austrian border with Hungary and Czechoslovakia. But it wasn’t only money they were looking for. They were also revolting against the taboo against sexuality in the former communist countries. Officially, there was no prostitution then, and now it was suddenly visible. They were defying all ideological restraints and opposing taboos, such as hidden prostitution and the spectre of capitalism. These young women were also harbingers of a new age. An age when you can buy just about anything with money. A question which Abbé Prévost had earlier pursued in his novel and in his own lifetime. He was concerned with the relationship between morality and liberalism. Can we condemn something that is part of human existence? As a Knight Hospitaller Prévost decided at early age to study theology. And – as described in Manon – his life took a different turn. He fell passionately in love, against his father’s wishes, and fled to England and Holland – a parallel with Des Grieux’s flight. However, Prévost became embroiled in many more amorous adventures, and even lost his job as tutor to the Lord Mayor of London’s son. After all, he had seduced his sister. Prévost also spent enormous sums on his liaisons. The name of one recorded femme fatale was Hélène Eckhardt. However, an extensive change of life can also be strenuous. Prévost accordingly decided to return to the ordered world of the church, which he intended to devote himself to through asceticism – as Franz Liszt did after him. He wrote his famous novel before this. It portrays

the time of the early Enlightenment in the Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut. The great issue of the time was the philosophical and political debate over the separation of church and state. A purely rational treatment of this issue was the task of academics and philosophers such as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Voltaire etc. An emotional treatment was the job of writers and other artists. As Prévost made the action very emotional and almost moving, the figure of the seductress Manon endured well into the Romantic period. Jean-François Auber composed the opera Manon, Jacques Halévy wrote a ballet with the same name, to mention just two.

LIBERTY, PASSION, MORALITY AND ASCETICISM Passion and depravity were also popular subjects of the Romantic period. The dark side of the human soul, combined with invisible powers, dominated both Charles Gounod’s Faust (1859) and Georges Bizet’s opéra comique Carmen (1872/75) , whose protagonist’s delight in life and drama arouses unrestrained passion in the previously dutiful and colourless sergeant Don José. Manon is a kindred spirit. And it is perhaps no coincidence that Henri Meilhac is the librettist in both. Like Prévost’s Enlightenment story Manon, Mozart’s Don Giovanni also enjoyed a renaissance, becoming the most performed Mozart opera in the Romantic period. Here again, there is the struggle between liberty, passion, morality and asceticism. But at the end of the 19th century, Auber’s Manon, once so popu-