Con passione disperata

Barrie Kosky directs Manon Lescaut in Zürich (****½) [live]

Opening scene with Daniel Norman as Edmondo © Monika Rittershaus

Manon is a male fantasy, the brainchild of a clergyman, Abbé Prévost, author of “Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut”. Later, composer and womanizer Giacomo Puccini would extract four scenes from it. Opera literature, which is completely dominated by white male composers, whether or not inspired by a female muse, would not be the same without these male fantasies.