Manon

Musical direction: Bertrand de Billy
Production: Andrei Serban

With the world premiere of Manon in 1884, Jules Massenet was able to celebrate what is probably the greatest triumph of his career as a composer – both in his home country of France and abroad. What impressed the audience from the very beginning was the variety of musical forms and textures: it abruptly switches from mass scenes to sections reminiscent of a chamber play, where each scene, however brief, is given its own, multi-faceted mood between genre painting, comedy and sensitive tragedy. Compared to the novel, Massenet elevates the mysteriousness of the seductive Manon, the child wife who drifts between love and luxury. Andrei Serban's staging takes up the rhythm of the score and, with the help of projections, allows lavish long shots of the stage to follow clear close ups, occasionally expanding the space of the stage in an unusually ingenious way by using mirrors