Opera’s grim fascination with ‘fallen women’ — as Welsh National Opera has called its latest mini-season — lies largely in the spectacle of the fall itself. But in Hans Werner Henze’s Boulevard Solitude, the composer’s 1952 operatic debut, the heroine — a tart denied even a heart — starts off near the bottom; her fall is less precipitous than those in the other two operas the company has chosen for its theme, Puccini’s Manon Lescaut and Verdi’s La traviata.
Like Puccini’s opera (and Massenet’s Manon), Henze’s is based on an 18th-century novel by the Abbé Prévost. But it updates the action to shortly after the second world war: the warm melodies and decorous opéra-comique niceties of those earlier adaptations are but memories among the rubble. Boulevard Solitude, though, is appealing precisely in its willingness to show how basically unappealing the character of Manon is, how fundamentally undramatic her inevitable undoing (largely brought about through decisions made for her by others) is.
The dubious moral in Prévost’s story seems less to be that women should keep themselves out of trouble than that men should fulfil their role in protecting them — something with which Germont père in La traviata would surely agree.
Get Britain's best politics newsletters
Register to get The Spectator's insight and opinion straight to your inbox. You can then read two free articles each week.
Already a subscriber? Log in
Comments
Join the debate for just $5 for 3 months
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for $5.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just $5 for 3 monthsAlready a subscriber? Log in