Manon Lescaut

ABOUT THE OPERA

Love knows no bounds, my guilt will be forgotten, but my love will not die… The beautiful Manon is no stranger to any human weakness – she would like both the love of the young knight Des Grieux and the life of luxury and wealth that only the old banker Géront can provide her… But everything has its price, and not even love can save everything.

“Manon is a heroine I believe in and therefore she cannot fail to win the hearts of the public. Why shouldn’t there be two operas about Manon? A woman like Manon can have more than one lover. Massenet feels it as a Frenchman, with powder and minuets. I shall feel it as an Italian, with a desperate passion,” declared Puccini determinedly when his publisher tried to talk him out of composing an opera on a subject that had already been set to music. And he did the right thing, because Manon Lescaut has been one of his great successes since its premiere in Turin in 1893. He kept his promise and offered his audience passion, despair and hope that overcomes even the tragic end of the main character. After all, love never dies.

In this country, Manon is known mainly thanks to the beautifully poetic treatment by Vítězslav Nezval, but Puccini’s opera is based on the original French novel by Abbé Antoine François Prévost d’Exiles which was published in Paris in 1731. But the capricious Manon is a woman for all ages and, thanks to her literary and dramatic background, she is certainly the right woman for regular National Theatre Brno drama director Štěpán Pácl on his first journey into the world of opera.

Premiere:  7th February 2025 at the Janáček Theatre

Staged in the Italian original with Czech, English and German titles