PUCCINI'S MANON LESCAUT STUDY GUIDE FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS BY CARLO DELFRATI 3 STUDY GUIDE FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS Each opera published in the series “Vox Ima- ing to an obstinate child with the appropri- go” is a response to a challenge: how to bring ate words (ability). young people closer to opera and its special With one qualification: askill is not absolute. language? The repertoire and language of There are as many degrees of skill as each opera are usually quite different from the mu- person is able to attain. In everything, even sical genres that interest them, so they are in music. rarely very familiar with it. In music, for example, knowledge means The purpose of this guide, like the previous knowing that Puccini’s Manon Lescaut was ones in the same series, is to offer teachers first performed in Turin in February 1893, ideas and suggestions that will help break where it was a resounding success by the down the barrier that separates the fans of immediacy of its expression and especially popular music from appreciating opera. In its rich melodic vein. The success was all the this case with Manon Lescaut, as in previous more deserved if one thinks that others be- years with The Magic Flute, Nabucco, La tra- fore Puccini had set the same story to music: viata, Fidelio and the Barbiere di Siviglia. Halévy, Auber, and above all the composer who surpassed them all with his Manon: Jules A preamble: skills Massenet. In planning their work, teachers have long This volume of “Vox Imago” contains a rich been urged by educationists to direct their set of materials which, in one way or anoth- work in such a way that students will be er, can all be presented educationally, as an equipped not just with knowledge, but also opportunity for so many units of scholastic the resources enabling them to find their own work, so much knowledge that can be used way forward creatively in the face of the ever to master skills. new tasks awaiting them in life. Whenever the We can start from the novel by the Abbé Education Minister changes the terminology Prévost, on which the libretto is based, and likewise changes, but the basic principle re- which enchanted Puccini when he heard the mains the same. operatic version composed by Jules Mass- The keyword launched in the new millenni- enet in 1884. um is skill, understood as the ability to joint- Unlike the knowledge which can be achieved ly use the knowledge and skills acquired to by reading a text, abilities require participa- successfully deal with a new specific task. A tion in listening, active listening (or reading physician is skillful if, after observing small the score in the case of an advanced skill). signs, he or she is capable of predicting the These are such things as being able to rec- course of the illness in the patient (ability), ognize whether the piece you are listening and knows how to identify the appropriate to is in binary or ternary meter; whether the medicine (knowledge). The plumber knows movement is brisk or slow; whether the mode how a water pipe is made (knowledge) and is major or minor; whether the pattern follows is capable of dealing with it (ability). The an ascending rather than a descending line, educator knows the possible reactions of a and so forth. These are perceptual abilities: © 2017 Musicom.it S.r.l. child (knowledge) and is capable of speak- they are all the more valuable the higher the 4 • CARLO DELFRATI STUDY GUIDE FOR SECONDARY SCHOOLS • 5 skill that one wishes or is able to attain. pupil’s literary skills. For instance: you might jewels stolen from his overflowing coffers. their happy endings, and Beethoven’s unique We can speak of skill in the case of anyone choose some point of the story as Prévost The act is fatal: Geronte discovers them and Fidelio, followed by a study of the heroines of who, in one way or another, has formed per- tells it, let’s say the death of Manon. Divide immediately has Manon arrested, while Des Bellini, Donizetti and Verdi (all creating prec- sonal ideas about any experience that he has: the students into groups, and suggest each Grieux manages to escape. edents for Puccini!). Then, leaving Romantic opera in our case. The opportunity to listen to group reduces it to a dialogue between the In Act III Manon has been condemned to de- opera, they could examine the realism of Bi- tunes, even if they are no more than the jin- two unfortunate lovers, then compare the portation to the New World. She is waiting zet or Strauss, or the verismo of Leoncavallo gles in commercials, elicits the first glimpse dialogue each group produces with that of to embark in the port of Le Havre, togeth- and Mascagni, leading to the summit repre- of a connection between a certain kind of the Italian and/or French librettists. (There is er with a group of prostitutes. Lescaut and sented by Alban Berg’s Lulu and Wozzeck. Al- music and particular impressions, emotions, a rhythmic Italian translation of the latter, to Des Grieux try to help her escape but fail. In though this could only be done by sampling or ideas: what is termed in the jargon com- which Manon was regularly sung in Italy until despair Des Grieux begs the captain to be some scenes, such a study would require ex- mon skill. a few decades ago.) allowed to embark on the same ship sailing tensive classroom time. But at least in a high A skill that goes beyond this elementary form In the music classes we are dealing with here, for the Louisiana. school where the students specialize in mu- develops when individuals, whether simple we only need to know the lyrics that Puccini And it is here, in the desert where the two sic, it would offer strong motivation to study listeners or students of composition, know had before his eyes and set to music. lovers have fled for the last time, that in Act the history of music, removing it from mere how to apply what they have learned to a IV poor Manon dies of hardship, while Des knowledge and raising it to the possession specific case that is new to them. In the case The story Grieux despairs, helpless to save her. of skills. of our pupils, this might be listening to Pucci- The opera is divided into four acts, set in so Manon was the first woman in a series that ni’s Manon Lescaut for the first time. many places. Act I is set outside a coaching in different settings would be embodied as Of flowers and trellises A first obvious kind of knowledge concerns inn in Amiens. The youthful Manon gets out La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, Suor To fix the pupils’ attention on a crucial point the plot. In the volume of “Vox Imago” you of from a carriage together with her brother Angelica, Turandot (as Liù in this last opera): of opera — we could call it the issue of issues can read an account of the hectic composi- Lescaut, who is taking her to become a nun. the fantastic projection of a chimerical world — a comparison could be useful. Try imagin- tion of the libretto, with at least five writers The girl immediately attracts the attention of which seems to offer an escape from every- ing a carpenter who builds a latticework to putting their hands to it, one after the other. the bystanders. She receives the overpow- day banality, presented to the compassion set against the wall of a house. Once finished And you will find the basic plot described ering attentions of the aging rake Geronte of audiences. The death of the heroines of all it makes a fine show in itself. Then a skillful clearly and commented on as it appears in and a passionate declaration from the young, his operas is not punishment or a form of mi- gardener grows some wonderful climbing the primary source, the novel by the Abbé penniless Chevalier Des Grieux. As soon as sogyny, as some have claimed. Rather it is a plants that twine around it and cover it in Prévost, from which the libretto at times dif- he discovers that the old man intends to ab- chimerical dream projected by the suffering flowers. This is rather like the relationship be- fers markedly. duct her and carry her off to Paris, Des Grieux and death of the frailest and most helpless tween the libretto of the opera and its musical A literature teacher (if the idea appears use- persuades her to give up the plan to enter a beings, so arousing the audience’s sympathy setting. The libretto may be a masterpiece, ful) could retrace the development from convent, which was actually no part of her and compassion — the important point as far or it may be wretchedly cobbled together, the novel to Puccini’s libretto, as well as the dreams, and run away with him. as Puccini was concerned. and the same may be true of our trellis. But libretto by Meilhac and Gille used by Jules In Act II we find Manon in Paris, not in the However the critics interpret Puccini’s ideas its workmanship may pass unnoticed or be Massenet for his own opera, Manon, per- arms of Des Grieux but in Geronte’s luxuri- of the female condition in his works, or the re- disregarded when it is buried in the mass of formed nine years earlier.