Opera's dark side alive in Manon

By TARA WERNER

Opera is full of fallen women or femme fatales. Manon is no exception, but there is a twist to the age-old story.

This heroine is much more than a teenage innocent abroad, about to be corrupted by a line-up of older, unscrupulous men. Her personality reflects moral weakness and cunning charm, and during the opera she acts as both predator and prey.

When L'Abbe Prevost's short novel Manon Lescaut was published in 1733 it caused an immediate scandal by its frank portrayal of sexual attraction. A journalist writing at the time summed up the hypocrisy of the age: "Look at Manon Lescaut, and then throw it in the fire, but you should read it once."

The story of doomed love between the beguilingly beautiful country girl Manon and the young nobleman Le Chevalier Des Grieux proved irresistible to the French composer Jules Massenet, who in 1884 transformed Prevost's morality tale into an opera notable for its intimate yet real emotional intensity.

It seems right, then, that when Irish soprano Majella Cullagh and New Zealand baritone Mark Pedrotti get together, the repartee fires. It's clear they both hold equally strong opinions about the characters they sing in the National Business Review New Zealand Opera production that opens at the Aotea Centre on Saturday night. That's where the emotional intensity comes into play - on and off stage. That they reinforce each other's thoughts about the complexity of the relationship between Manon and her low-life cousin Lescaut reflects the intimacy that comes from working closely together.

Prevost's seedy romance is set in Regency Paris in the early 1700s, a flamboyant and licentious time in French history, notable for its corruption and vice. Gambling was the main and often only source of income for many, and the beneficiaries of the gambling table were helped by armies of touts recruited from the ranks of officers who never saw active service.

Lescaut was one of these touts, living by his wits, points out Pedrotti.

"Lescaut is, in essence, Manon's pimp," he says candidly. "He sees her as a way of earning money to support his gambling habit. He sells her to his friends. She's young and naive when she first comes to Paris under his care, and it is this very innocence that makes her so attractive to men."

But Manon herself is not the blushing innocent that she may first seem, and she has a lot in common with her cousin, adds Cullagh.

"At the beginning of the opera she has never been off the farm and her instant love for Des Grieux is quite real. She is more inexperienced than naive. In the end her weakness for money and having a good time is her downfall. It's easy to see how she is related to Lescaut since they are both attracted to wealth and an easy lifestyle."

Cullagh draws parallels with 21st-century society. "There's nothing wrong with wanting to have nice clothes and financial independence, and she would be seen as a career girl in today's terms. But, unlike today, Manon had to do everything through men. She's a free spirit, extrovert and fun-loving. But she pays the price for her emotional independence and is victimised, cast off as being a prostitute."

Manon is finally punished as a disruptive force in society - a female seducer who even at the end retains her power of attraction when dying in her lover's arms.

As such the opera has its dark qualities, where in life everything has its price. This factor is strongly communicated in this production, which was first staged by English National Opera. It plays up predatory and voyeuristic themes to emphasise Manon's predicament. The cast and chorus become the commentators, participants and observers of Manon's life. And the stage becomes an arena where the action transparently unfolds. Adds Pedrotti, "When you think of it, the story is actually quite nasty. The action may be set back in Regency France, and it's a comment on the corruption and seediness of the time. A feeling that people are always ready to pounce.

"There's a darkness to it. But the story still has meaning today. Simply put, money just cannot buy love. Manon finds this out, but much too late."