27.02.2017
Willkommen zurück, Manon!
On 9 March, Giacomo Puccini’s opera Manon Lescaut will return to the stage of the Mikhailovsky Theatre. Rather like the opera’s heroine, director Jürgen Flimm’s production is notable for its impulsiveness and its quest for change. The production, the first joint project between the Mikhailovsky Theatre and Berlin’s Staatsoper, recently travelled to Germany following two seasons in Russia. Its German première took place in December 2016, delighting music fans and garnering a host of positive reviews in the European press. After a run of winter performances in Berlin, the production has returned once again to St. Petersburg.
Manon Lescaut was extremely well-received in Berlin. Critics were full of praise both for the creators’ artistic vision and the musical quality of the production. Reviewers were particularly struck by the final scene. In it, the director focuses the audience’s attention on the “desperation and abandonment of Manon and des Grieux”, wrote a reviewer on one of Europe’s leading arts websites, Bachtrack. “The final moment of her death is staged with a powerful bleakness. The desert is an abstract space, with run-down relics of previous acts. It’s dramatically effective, if not necessarily itself offering a key to the rest of the production.”
The Mikhailovsky Theatre’s principle conductor, Mikhail Tatarnikov, directed the performances of Manon Lescaut in Berlin, where his work was also met with considerable appreciation. “Mikhail Tatarnikov... conducted an intelligent and well-paced account of the score, more cool and controlled, perhaps, than ardent and impassioned, but well matched to the scale of both cast and production,” said the Bachtrack reviewer.
Manon Lescaut was extremely well-received in Berlin. Critics were full of praise both for the creators’ artistic vision and the musical quality of the production. Reviewers were particularly struck by the final scene. In it, the director focuses the audience’s attention on the “desperation and abandonment of Manon and des Grieux”, wrote a reviewer on one of Europe’s leading arts websites, Bachtrack. “The final moment of her death is staged with a powerful bleakness. The desert is an abstract space, with run-down relics of previous acts. It’s dramatically effective, if not necessarily itself offering a key to the rest of the production.”
The Mikhailovsky Theatre’s principle conductor, Mikhail Tatarnikov, directed the performances of Manon Lescaut in Berlin, where his work was also met with considerable appreciation. “Mikhail Tatarnikov... conducted an intelligent and well-paced account of the score, more cool and controlled, perhaps, than ardent and impassioned, but well matched to the scale of both cast and production,” said the Bachtrack reviewer.
