Manon Lescaut: Puccini’s Anna Nicole?

This season has already seen Manon Lescaut appear in several different operatic guises across the UK, but it was Covent Garden’s new production of Puccini’s version (its first staging of it in three decades) that was the hottest ticket of all. The Latvian soprano Kristine Opolais and the superstar tenor Jonas Kaufmann were tackling the roles of the lovers, Manon and Des Grieux, for the first time. Antonio Pappano, in the repertoire where he most reliably excels, was in the pit.

In an introductory talk before the production opened, the conductor tentatively drew a comparison between Puccini’s first major success and Mark-Anthony Turnage’s Anna Nicole, which opens the Royal Opera’s next season. He has a point, of course, not least because Manon — especially in Puccini’s work — is a heroine who can be seen, depending on one’s point of view, as either exploiter or exploited, a victim of others or of herself.