MANON LESCAUT

Last night my wife and I went to see Manon Lescaut, the opera by Puccini that was his first big success.

Opera is in many ways ridiculous. Characters fall instantly in love, and end up dying (though it usually takes a while, as they have to get through a couple of arias during the death throes). In Manon, the hero (des Grieux) and heroine (Manon) are, respectively, an impoverished student and an 18-year old waif. Yet the middle-aged tenor had a tummy three times the size of mine, while the soprano was built like a battleship. It strained credulity to see the young lovers rolling around on the bed in the second act, you feared for the bed.

Yet opera can also be brilliant and deeply moving. You need to have a fair amount of lung capacity to sing an opera role, which makes svelte singers rather rare. If I shut my eyes, the singing was wonderful, particularly in conjunction with some fantastic orchestral playing in the third and fourth acts. Yes, it was all over the top and melodramatic. But I loved it.

Walter Blotscher