Giacomo Puccini was right on time. With Italy’s greatest opera composer, Giuseppe Verdi, in the twilight of his career, it appeared the country’s status as an operatic epicenter might end with the ...

The Washington National Opera’s brilliant revival of “Manon Lescaut” demonstrates that as early as 1893, when Giacomo Puccini was writing this, his first popular work, he knew well how to use music to ...

Manon Lescaut is an opera in four acts by Giacomo Puccini. The story is based on the 1731 novel L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost and should not be confused ...

On the minus side, any contemporary rendering of a slight-ish melodrama adapted from Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel goes against the grain of the depicted attempts to send our pleasure-loving young heroine ...

Kristine Opolais in Act 2 of ‘Manon Lescaut’ (all photos by Ken Howard, courtesy Metropolitan Opera) (click to enlarge) The Met’s new production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut, directed by Richard Eyre, ...

It's set in early 18th Century France—and Louisiana. Puccini felt that he could bring true Italian passion to the tale, and indeed he did. Though it’s an early work, it contains much of the rich, ...

Dallas Opera's Gregory Kunde and Kristin Lewis perform in a dress rehearsal of Puccini's Manon Lescaut at the Winspear Opera House in Dallas on Feb. 27. Lawrence Jenkins / Special Contributor The ...

In this Opera Cheat Sheet Houston Public Media's St.John Flynn and Eric Skelly of the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra give an overview of Massenet's...oops, wrong one!...Giacomo Puccini's take on the ...

3 Review: FALSTAFF Shows that We Can Count on Juilliard for the Next Generation of Singers Manon Lescaut has been performed 224 times by the Met. Its first Met performance was in the presence of the ...

Hear Kristine Opolais and Roberto Alagna as the ill-fated lovers in Puccini’s passionate adaptation of the classic novel about a free-spirited country girl. Sir Richard Eyre’s new production, ...

From the Met’s new Manon Lescaut. Photo: Ken Howard/Metropolitan Opera The beauty of certain sturdy operas is that they can survive just about any directorial manhandling if the singing is good enough ...

Kent has taken on the laudable task of updating the opera, moving the action away from its 18th century setting to find contemporary resonances. But there are big problems: no one sends their ...