The Opéra Bastille is a late postmodern strongbox for storytelling. Behind its brutalist façade of glass and exposed concrete lies a portal to the finest ballets, operas, and symphony concerts in Paris, revolving on a seasonal programme like bewitching images on a magic lantern. Manon, an opéra comique in five acts with music by Jules Massenet and a torridly emotional libretto by Henri Meilhac and Phillippe Gille, is its latest offering and revives a production first staged in 2018. Playing on local Parisian lore and the perennial interest in Les Années folles, director Vincent Huguet transposes the nineteenth-century piece to the hedonistic 1920s, making the titular Manon into a doomed and glittering Fitzgeraldian heroine.
A classic story of tragic love and material lust, Massenet took his inspiration from the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost. Yet where the novel renders Manon a voiceless inamorata, Massent’s opera attributes to her a vibrant and beguiling voice. Unlike other adaptations of the tale, librettists Meilhac and Gille excel in turning Manon into a contradictory and morally ambiguous character. She is capable of expressing deeply felt romantic rapture, but this is always undergirded by a steely pragmatism. Money – or Mammon – is her vice. And although one could refer to this opera as a moral parable, its crushing emotional weight and intricately limned characterisations ensure nothing is sketchy or stridently didactic.
It begins as Manon is set to enter a convent, shielding herself from her recurrent temptations towards worldly pleasure and luxury. However, a rather dashing obstacle is presented in the form of the chevalier des Grieux, whom she meets by happenstance and falls for with thunderbolt swiftness. They set off for Paris together in hope of a fulfilling future, yet Manon’s rapacious social and economic ambitions quickly seem of greater value than the devotion of the chevalier des Grieux. What follows is decadence and decay, romance and ruination. Perhaps Manon would have been better off going to a nunnery after all.
As Des Grieux, tenor Benjamin Bernheim is every inch the heady romantic; one moment he’s dreaming of a snug lover’s cottage in the woods, the next he’s the one melodramatically running towards religion in response to Manon’s betrayal. Benheim’s mouth is singularly capable of conjuring such emotional storms, adeptly navigating the volatile arcs of his character with sensitivity and thundering anguish. Particularly exceptional was Benheim’s performance of ‘En fermant les yeux’, which was like walking into the shadows of a dream. He is undoubtedly the best performance of the evening.
Soprano Amina Edris takes on the role of Manon. With considerable skill she convincingly portrays the Cinderella-like transformation her character undergoes from a young impulsive dreamer to sophisticated toast of the bon ton. In early scenes her vocals are chirpy, even hysterical; as she talks to her sententious cousin Lescaut (Andrzej Filonczyk, with echoes of Laertes), her voice is in a state of excitable dazzlement which works well with conductor Pierre Dumoussaud’s fluttering orchestration. (Lescaut’s vocals, by contrast, are comically self-indulgent; his end notes are prolonged, one gathers, because he likes the sound of his own voice.) But what this Manon needs to do is really seduce us and notch up her femme fatale persona. Grieux refers to her as a ‘sphinx’, yet he’s the one who holds us in mystified thrall.
Nevertheless, this is largely compensated for by the costume department, who make Manon into a twinkling objet d’art. In Act III her white ballgown conveys swan-like elegance and differentiates her from the decadent gowns of the partygoers, signalling her graduation to the very heights of the Parisian elite. Other touches that enhance the production come from set designer Aurélie Maestre, who makes gestures to architectural masters of the epoch, Le Corbusier and Auguste Perret. While lighting designer Christophe Forey catches romantic yearning by projecting silhouettes of the lovers embracing above the stage, a nod to the opera’s eighteenth-century origins and the vogue for shadow profiles at the time.
All in all, Huguet’s production is a lavishly realised piece, conveying all the devastation and poignancy of lovers tragically thwarted by yielding to the excesses of their passions. And if you happen to be in Paris, then Manon is a show to which any pleasure-seeker will succumb with delight.
Music: Jules Massenet
Libretto: Henri Meilhac and Philippe Gille
Conductor: Pierre Dumoussaud
Director: Vincent Huguet
Photo credits: Sébastien Mathé
Cast includes: Amina Edris; Benjamin Bernheim; Andrzej Filonczyk; Nicolas Cavallier; Danielle Gabour; Régis Mengus.
Until: Saturday 20th June 2025
Running Time: 3 hours and 50 minutes, including two intermissions
Review by Olivia Hurton