Hamburg State Opera (live stream), 24/01/2021

 Massenet : Manon

Chorus and Orchestra of the Hamburg State Opera

Sébastien Rouland

This was a true COVID production; minimal contact between the soloists, reduced orchestration, chorus distributed throughout the dress circle boxes of the auditorium. The interaction between the soloists is manageable, but it's very odd not to have the chorus on-stage at all.  However, the oddest thing of all in this production is that despite the fact that the soloists were all wired for sound, and the orchestra was reduced, there were still moments - quite frequent, in fact - when the soloists were almost drowned by the orchestra.  When they were not, the acoustic effect was distinctly reverberant - shower room acoustics - and somewhat off-putting.  

David Bösch's production is in modern dress, or more or less.  It's hard to tell with the men, and at first sight, but some aspects appear to place the action in maybe the 60s, yet there are still anachronisms - Des Grieux is using an old-style fountain pen, the type you still have to dip in ink, to write his letter, and the microphone used in the Cours de la Reine scene is the classic wartime type.  On the whole, however, it's still very much set in the 20th Century, and Manon's character reflects that.  It's not until the later part of the opera that she shows that fatal weakness for luxury, before that she simply wants to live, in a way that her family was never going to allow her.  Rather than a courtesan, she becomes a cabaret star, she has a career and is not simply an ornament for a rich man, and interestingly, Bretigny is prepared to marry her, which is completely opposed to her original situation. 

In many respects, therefore, the third act is Manon as the ultimate spoiled brat; the world has been laid out at her feet, as a performer, and she does not see why she cannot have Des Grieux as well, as she once had.  Since prostitution has a more distinct definition than it had, at the end of the Hôtel de Transylvanie scene, Manon shoots Guillot de Morfontaine, and the end turns into Romeo and Juliet, with Manon taking poison, and Des Grieux slitting his wrists.  It works, after a fashion, but I didn't feel that it's Manon, that there was the conflict in the individual between her heart's desire, and her earthly desires.  As for Lescaut, he was completely undermined, beginning as a gambler, passing through alcoholic, turning to drug addict.  It's a bleak, uncompromising production, but peopled by recognisably real characters.  Yet they are not Abbé Prévost's, or Massenet's. characters, who are also as recognisable today as they were so long ago.

Elsa Dreisig (Manon), Act 3.i
Manon, Hamburg State Opera, 2021
(screenshot)

Elsa Dreisig was impeccable as Manon, extraordinarily natural at all times, simple and complex, spontaneous and artificial.  I would have liked more clarity in the French, and that all round, not just Dreisig, who was, I think, the only native French speaker in the cast, but on the whole it was very passable.  Ioan Hotea's Des Grieux had a youthful eagerness one doesn't often see, very much to the point with this character, and his singing had a charming freshness right to the end.  Björn Bürger was a vibrant, earthy Lescaut, a little wasted on the trainwreck Bösch made of this character, while Alexey Bogdanchikov and Dimitriy Ivashchenko put up strong showings as Bretigny and Des Grieux père respectively.  The chorus did its best, but the spread-out position in the auditorium had its costs, and there was quite a lot of uneven singing, although the sound overall was good. 

However, the star of the show was incontestably the Hamburg State Opera Orchestra. Even in reduced format (and it didn't sound it in the least), Rouland delivered a vibrant, vivid performance that gripped from start to finish, whatever the shortcomings on stage.  This was a strange, uneven production marred by  an inconsistent choral presence, but Dreisig, Hotea and Rouland's direction were well worth hearing.