| Manon by Jules Massenet |
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| My favorite recording of Manon, with Victoria de los Angeles in the title role, has been re-issued on Testament compact discs. Available from amazon.com |
| The libretto in French of Massenet's Manon can be found at http://archive.org/stream/manonoperainfive00massuoft/manonoperainfive00massuoft_djvu.txt |
| My e-mail address is: johnrpierce@yahoo.com |
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| The opera's libretto was based on the short novel Manon Lescaut by the Abbé Prévost. |
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| Martin Bernheimer wrote of this recording in Opera News of January 2002, "Victoria de los Angeles, radiant and poised, sweet and voluptuous as needed, was a stellar Hispanic guest in this ultra-Gallic milieu. Her artful Manon is sensitively integrated, however, with Henri Legay's exquisitely articulated des Grieux fils, Jean Borthayre's patrician, gently sardonic des Grieux père and Michel Dens's debonair, ultra-suave Lescaut." |
| The recording of Manon with Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna has received a Grammy nomination in the category Best Opera Recording 2001. Available from amazon.com. |
| About this recording, Richard Fairman wrote in Gramophone of June 2001: "Recorded in mono in 1955, the set fell at a unique point in the opera’s history on disc. Previous recordings from the 78rpm era had captured the special Opéra-Comique spirit for posterity, but they hold limited sonic appeal to present-day collectors; later recordings have up-to-date sound, but their international casts generally cannot claim the same sense of style. Only with this 1955 set do we get the best of both worlds." |
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