PUCCINI’S “MANON LESCAUT” PACKS A PUNCH AT SEATTLE OPERA McCaw Hall, Seattle, WA; January 15, 2005 With “Manon Lescaut,” Puccini not only secured his first commercial triumph but also began to zero in on his authentic voice. It’s that act of self-proclamation above all else — for all the opera’s flaws of absurd dramaturgy and incongruous scoring — that still gives the work an appealing vitality. The trouble lies in connecting the dots within what is a pronouncedly bipolar work — not to mention casting for the ultra-demanding parts of the two, equally vivid principals. Seattle Opera’s production (which originated at L’Opéra de Montréal) doesn’t come up with any quantum-leap solutions, but it’s a smart and thoroughly involving realization that tugs away at skeptical resistance in the big climaxes. The overall effect pits hard-edged realism against fantasy, money against self-sufficient love, with the ironic determinism of an F. Scott Fitzgerald novel. Carol Vaness here essays her first Puccini Manon. It’s a well-considered performance, with lots of intelligent phrasing and warmth of expression in the role’s many low-lying passages, and security throughout the range. Maybe too intelligent in fact: the one thing that seems missing is Manon as a lost girl, who simply doesn’t understand the consequences of her behavior. Vaness has a tendency to appear in control, too wise, not fragile enough, especially in the dizzying sequence of characteristics she exhibits in Act 2. The emotional payoff in her portrayal thus gravitates toward the massive Liebestod of the final act, where, too late, Manon seems to have seen the light at last. But the real revelation is in tenor Jay Hunter Morris’s Des Grieux. He understands the magical shifts in temperature needed at the opera’s turning points and brings an instrument of superbly focused power, with a gleaming top, to the role. Morris shapes a character who is both obsessive and tender: the intensity of his reactions to his beloved’s fate gives a unique urgency to his point of view (the original focus of Abbé Prévost’s brilliant novel, if not Puccini’s opera). Arthur Woodley doesn’t settle for Geronte as the standard ogre; with comic flair, he instead even elicits sympathy in his misguided, clueless affection for Manon during the evening’s entertainment at his mansion. Earle Patriarco’s Lescaut is less a confirmed cynic than a repentant opportunist, bringing a youthful demeanor to his role. Tenor Doug Jones is a real gem here, milking Edmondo, the Dancing Master, and the Lamplighter each to the max with utterly distinct, incisive personalities. The chorus adds substantially to the mirth and gloom, respectively, of Acts 1 and 3. Conductor Antonello Allemandi’s sense of flow and dramatic momentum prove highly effective. His delineation of textures in the mournful final act is particularly memorable. Bernard Uzan’s staging presents four acutely observed pictures for each of the acts, with lots of realistic detail for the bustle of the opening scene in the Amiens square and for the gloomy Le Havre docks of Act 3, dominated by prison grilles and the menacing prow of the ship. Towering powdered wigs and shiny dresses in Act 2 telegraph Manon’s dramatic rise in station as the wife of the aristocrat Geronte. In the next act, a memorably harrowing rendition of the roll-call humiliation shows Manon and the other prostitute deportees lined up to be ritually shorn of their unadorned hair before they are forced to embark for America. But within these pictures Uzan intersperses segments of dream time that seem to stop the realistic action to allow for another plane: a kind of fantasy world in which Manon and Des Grieux express their love. Their first “sweet dream” of mutually recognized love takes place against a freeze-frame of the gathered students and townsfolk. Uzan traces a larger, grim arc through the opera from this opening spring full of promise, with its dream, to the nightmare of the final act (set in the “desolate wilderness” outside New Orleans): here a surreal, blasted heath with poisonous fog. Is it only in extreme hopelessness, we are asked at the end, that true love has a hold? Thomas May