Sébastien Mathé / OnP

Sébastien Mathé / OnP

Opera

Manon

Jules Massenet

Opéra Bastille

from 26 May to 20 June 2025

from €15 to €175

3h50 with 2 intervals

Manon

Opéra Bastille - from 26 May to 20 June 2025

Synopsis

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“Let us love, laugh and sing without end”, proclaims Manon, even more attracted by jewels and the easy life than by her love – however sincere – for the Chevalier des Grieux. If this opera, inspired by Abbé Prévost’s novel, is one of Jules Massenet’s most popular, it is because the drama is portrayed in a musical idiom as fertile as it is varied...

Alternating recitatives, musical forms reminiscent of the 18th century and grand lyrical or virtuoso arias (“Manon, sphynx étonnant”, “Je marche sur tous les chemins”), the score renews the conventions of “opéra-comique”.

Beyond the story of a passionate love affair, the work paints a picture of Regency-era morals just as it reflects those of the Third Republic – the period of Manon’s creation. This society of pleasure, painstakingly concealing brutality and sordidness, is also the society of the Roaring Twenties, the setting for Vincent Huguet’s production.

Duration : 3h50 with 2 intervals

Language : French

Surtitle : French / English

Show acts and characters

CHARACTERS

Manon Lescaut
Le Chevalier des Grieux: Manon’s lover
Lescaut: Manon’s cousin
Le Comte des Grieux: The Chevalier’s father
Guillot de Morfontaine: An old rake
Brétigny: Manon’s wealthy patron
Poussette, Javotte, Rosette: Three demimondaines

First part

Act 1 - Amiens
The elderly Guillot de Morfontaine and his mistresses Poussette, Javotte and Rosette are enjoying a raucous dinner in the company of Brétigny. Just then, a group of travellers arrive. Among them is the young Manon. She is greeted by her cousin Lescaut who has been given the task of escorting her to the convent.

The beautiful young girl does not go unnoticed and Guillot attempts to woo her by flaunting his wealth. Lescaut sends him on his away and urges Manon to be prudent while he goes to visit the louche little cabaret next door. Left alone once more, Manon dreams of the life that has been denied her. The arrival of the Chevalier Des Grieux pulls her out of her melancholy: for the young pair it is love at first sight and they decide to run away to Paris.

Act 2 - Paris
The young couple are now living in a makeshift apartment. Des Grieux reads Manon the letter he has written to his father informing the latter of his intention to marry her. As he does, they are interrupted by the arrival of Lescaut and Brétigny whom Manon immediately recognises despite his disguise. A game of deception begins: Lescaut pretends to have reconciled with Des Grieux, while Brétigny informs Manon that her lover will be taken to his father by force that same evening.

In exchange for her silence, he promises to make her the queen of Paris society. Despite the sincerity of her love, Manon agrees and resigns herself to changing her life. Des Grieux senses her torment but it is toolate: he is dragged away despite Manon’s protestations.

Second part

Act 3 - Firts scene The Cours-la-Reine
It is a public holiday on the Cours-la-Reine promenade. Poussette, Javotte and Rosette are having fun at Guillot’s expense while Lescaut is playing the suitor. Manon makes a grand entrance and proclaims before her gathered admirers the necessity of making the most of being young.

She overhears a conversation between Brétigny and Des Grieux and learns that Des Grieux has decided to withdraw from the world and enter a seminary. Guillot, who is eager to seduce Manon and steal her away from Brétigny, has arranged to have the Opera Ballet perform for her. However, Manon decides to leave the festivities and go off in search of Des Grieux.

Act 3 - Second scene Saint-Sulpice
Des Grieux has just delivered a sermon that has greatly impressed the devout congregation. His father again tries to dissuade him from taking holy orders, but the young man remains intransigent. The arrival of Manon, however, greatly unsettles him.

She begs him to forgive her for her betrayal. Des Grieux is torn between his desire and his new duties but he ultimately yields to Manon’s charms and runs away with her again.

Third part

Act 4 - The hotel de Transylvanie
Manon’s profligate spending has depleted Des Grieux’s resources. To replenish them, he lets himself be drawn into a gambling den often frequented by Lescaut. Despite his reluctance and distaste for gambling, he agrees to play a couple of rounds with Guillot which Des Grieux wins in quick succession.

The latter’s remarkable luck irks his adversary who accuses him of cheating. Guillot threatens the couple and leaves but returns soon thereafter with the police who arrest Manon and Des Grieux with the blessing of Des Grieux’s father.

Act 5 - The road to le Havre
On a road leading to Le Havre, Des Grieux and Lescaut await the passage of a convoy of girls sentenced for deportation. Lescaut manages to bribe the guards so that Manon and Des Grieux can spend a moment alone. The young woman blames herself for destroying their love and begs forgiveness. Des Grieux reassures her and tries to give her hope, but she dies in his arms dreaming of their past happiness.

Artists

Opera-comique in five acts and six scenes (1884)

After the novel by Abbé Prévost

Creative team

Cast

The Paris Opera Orchestra and Chorus

Media

[TRAILER] MANON by Jules Massenet
[TRAILER] MANON by Jules Massenet
  • Draw-me Manon

    Draw-me Manon

    Watch the video

  • Manon through the ages

    Manon through the ages

    Read the article

Draw-me Manon

Watch the video

Understand the plot in 1 minute

1:15 min

Draw-me Manon

By Matthieu Pajot

When, in 1731, l’Abbé Prévost wrote L’Histoire du chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut – the work that inspired Massenet’s Manon – he portrayed an entire era, that of the Regency, which saw the old order fade away and a new order, full of the promise of unprecedented freedom, rise from its ashes. Manon must make her way between these two worlds, fleeing the convent in order to embrace the paths of desire and transgression, throwing herself headlong into a burning and destructive passion with Des Grieux. A parenthesis opens, only to close again in suffering and obscurity. The director Vincent Huguet casts the work’s customary taffeta aside in order to bring out its violence to the full.

Playlist

© Caroline Laguerre

Manon through the ages

Read the article

Caught between a homage to 18th century France and a yearning for Wagnerian monumentalism

05 min

Manon through the ages

By Valère Etienne / BmO

Hailed as one of Massenet’s masterpieces, the first audiences of Manon were nonetheless struck by the hybrid nature of the work: faithful to the traditions of French comic opera in an era when the genre was slowly drifting into obsolescence, Manon seemed haunted by the memory of Rameau and Lully, yet at the same time infused with a lyricism that on occasions seemed tinged with Wagnerian overtones. The opera was Massenet’s tribute to Manon Lescaut and 18th century France. There is an authenticity in the way the work recreates a period of history and the manner in which it expresses the most timeless of human passions.

When Massenet presented his operatic adaptation of Manon Lescaut, numerous voices reproached him for not remaining faithful to the text of Abbé Prévost’s novel. Yet it was difficult to remain faithful: one could not expect a composer at the end of the 19th century writing an opera based on a novel dating from the reign of Louis XV to be in osmosis with his subject. Instead, he adopted an objective relationship towards it. Objective, because already, with Manon’s passage from the page to a theatre stage, the subjectivity of the first-person narrative which characterised the novel was no longer valid. Objective too, due to the historical distance which separated Massenet from the Abbé Prévost and made Manon, Des Grieux, and all the other characters, creatures of their time and exemplars of a bygone world and era.

Première page du manuscrit autographe de Manon / BnF
Première page du manuscrit autographe de Manon / BnF © BnF

It is therefore true that, for Massenet, composing Manon was in part a task of historical reconstruction: he needed to evoke the music of the Regency period in which the novel is set. For that, Massenet, influenced by the neoclassical aesthetic of the times which willingly looked upon the 18th century as an age bubbling with celebrations, masked balls, and rococo hedonism, decided to give the work the allure of a pastiche by adding numerous references to the musical traditions of 18th century France: the opera opens with a gavotte which we see repeated at the beginning of the scene on the Cours-la-Reine while the rhythm of a minuet and a passepied serve as structuring elements for Act III. Even some of the arias, such as the duet “La charmante promenade” performed by Poussette and Javotte in Act III with its two voices superimposed over a third, or Lescaut’s burlesque refrain “Ô Rosalinde, il me faudrait gravir le Pinde”, with its ornate song lines, evoke the vocal arts of the 18th century and the style of Lully or Rameau. It is by these subtle means that Massenet achieves a form of historical verism which gives his Manon a splash of 18th century colour.

In addition to this, the opera includes several passages of intense lyricism which correspond to the subjective effusions of the two principal characters and mark a contrast with the objectivity of the historical reconstruction: the “Louis XV” atmosphere is interspersed with moments of passion that have almost Wagnerian overtones, to the point that the first audiences of Manon were unsettled by this apparent dichotomy. Indeed, regarding the famous aria “Adieu, notre petite table” in Act II, delivered by a distraught Manon as she leaves the apartment she shared with Des Grieux, Louis de Fourcaud noted with irony that “not even Yseult could shed as many tears mourning Tristan”. Sometimes, the transition between the lightness of the recitative and the drama of the singing is achieved all but imperceptibly, around the turn of a phrase. In the scene along the Cours-la-Reine, Manon, initially caught up in all the dancing on stage, is suddenly thrown into a state of agitation by a flood of memories and an avalanche of questions: “The rococo cake crumbles at the very moment it is presented to us; the pseudo-aesthetic evocation of the 18th century fades opposite the timeless passion of the protagonist.” (Jacques Joly)

Le Cours-la-Reine. Estampe de Jules Gaildrau (1816-1898)
Le Cours-la-Reine. Estampe de Jules Gaildrau (1816-1898) © BnF

All of this can easily be explained: this subtle balance between historic distance and the expression of timeless feelings was the real way for Massenet to show his faithfulness to Abbé Prévost’s novel by adapting it for the opera with the hindsight of 150 years of history, in an era when everything in the 19th century stood in stark contrast with the era of the original work. In an interview in Le Figaro published on the day of Manon’s premiere at the Opéra-Comique (January 19, 1884), Massenet talked about the objective which guided him when he composed the work: Manon had to be the halfway house somewhere between Italian opera where the characters express themselves with sentences that reflect their lives, rather than through “ambient arias” and the art of someone like Wagner in which, conversely, the same sentences melt into a sea of harmony. “And this intentional contrast between the feelings of time and place and human feelings is among the effects on which I feel most able to rely”, said Massenet.

It is significant that these two trends, which in Manon are reconciled, became mutually exclusive in the operas which Massenet composed in the years that followed: in 1894, Le Portrait de Manon which tells us what happened to Des Grieux in later life, is nothing more than an ironic and nostalgic pastiche; whereas in Werther, which premiered in 1893 and is considered by some as his “Tristan”, Massenet leaned resolutely towards the master of Bayreuth, giving way to continuous melody and the overall influence of his hero’s subjectivity on the musical discourse.

" Massenet is currently being honoured by France’s National Library the BNF which is presenting its collection of e-documents about the compositor on Gallica its digital database. On it, among other things, you will be able to see the sets and costumes that were used for the performances of Manon and some of his other stage works."    

Playlist

  • Manon (saison 19/20)- (Pretty Yende, Benjamin Bernheim)

  • Manon (saison 19/20)- ACTE 1 (Ludovic Tézier)

  • Manon (saison 19/20)- ACTE 3 (Benjamin Bernheim)

  • Manon (saison 19/20)- ACTE 1 (Pretty Yende)

  • Manon (saison 19/20)- ACTE 3 (Roberto Tagliavini)

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Manon


Watch online the recording from season 19/20 on Paris Opera Play, with Pretty Yende, Benjamin Bernheim, Ludovic Tézier...

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Access and services

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

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Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

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Imagined as benchmark, richly illustrated booklets, the programmes can be bought online, at the box offices, in our shops, and in the theatres hall on the evening of the performance.    

BUY THE PROGRAM
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

Opéra Bastille

Place de la Bastille

75012 Paris

Public transport

Underground Bastille (lignes 1, 5 et 8), Gare de Lyon (RER)

Bus 29, 69, 76, 86, 87, 91, N01, N02, N11, N16

Calculate my route
Car park

Q-Park Opéra Bastille 34, rue de Lyon 75012 Paris

Book your parking spot
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text
super alt text

Imagined as benchmark, richly illustrated booklets, the programmes can be bought online, at the box offices, in our shops, and in the theatres hall on the evening of the performance.    

BUY THE PROGRAM
  • Cloakrooms

    Free cloakrooms are at your disposal. The comprehensive list of prohibited items is available here.

  • Bars

    Reservation of drinks and light refreshments for the intervals is possible online up to 24 hours prior to your visit, or at the bars before each performance.

  • Parking

    You can park your car at the Q-Park Opéra Bastille. It is located at 34 rue de Lyon, 75012 Paris. 

    BOOK YOUR PARKING PLACE.

In both our venues, discounted tickets are sold at the box offices from 30 minutes before the show:

  • €35 tickets for under-28s, unemployed people (with documentary proof less than 3 months old) and senior citizens over 65 with non-taxable income (proof of tax exemption for the current year required)
  • €70 tickets for senior citizens over 65

Get samples of the operas and ballets at the Paris Opera gift shops: programmes, books, recordings, and also stationery, jewellery, shirts, homeware and honey from Paris Opera.

Opéra Bastille
  • Open 1h before performances and until performances end
  • Get in from within the theatre’s public areas
  • For more information: +33 1 40 01 17 82

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