Manon Lescaut

Giacomo Puccini
Vladimir Galouzine (Des Grieux)
Katrina Mattila (Manon Lescaut)

ACT I
Beautiful Manon, who is on the way to a convent, flees with Des Grieux, who falls in love with her at the first glance. Manon, beautiful but sad, is irresolute, but to escape from an abduct planned by an old rich man, she has no other choice than leaving with Des Grieux. The orchestra overwhelms arias and I am thinking how much I paied for this.

ACT II
Manon enjoys the luxury in the palace of the old rich man in Paris. This advent was only insinuated by her brother in the end of Act I. He told the old rich man that Manon who envies the wealth would come back to him. What would be more interesting to me is why Manon, who was seemingly distressed--remember that she was on the way to a convent--and also loved Des Grieux so much, left him. Amid the jewelry, she now misses the kisses from Des Grieux. Stupidity and vanity! By her brother's help, Manon meets Des Grieux in secret. From this moment, the opera goes on basically by those two. Galouzine has an amazingly expressive voice. Mattila has rather a weak voice, but bursts out in high tones. Des Grieux asks Manon to leave with him again, but Manon's reluctance to leaving behind the jewelry finally makes her be arrested. Manon's own word describing her vacillation between love and luxury: "How bittersweet, this pain."

ACT III and IV
Deserted in a plain in Lousiana, America, Manon slowly dies. Des Grieux, who followed her destiny, cries out.

The music is rather gloomy sometimes, but beautiful. But a more beautiful thing is Galouzine's confident, expressive, and compelling voice. On the other hand, I don't care for the narrative. That's why the literature has its own merit to explore the humanities among other art forms.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Sociology of Education in Canada

Wotherspoon, Terry. (2004). 2nd Ed. Don Mills, ON: Oxford University Press. Sociology, which was first used by the French writer Compte in the nineteenth century to read the rapidly changing society after the Industrial revolution, is foremost a study of society and is divided into diverse fields which are determined by the perspective each study takes. Three major perspectives are structural functionalism--focusing on the orderly social structure, like a living organism, thus fundamentally aiming to stablize the structure by identifying and removing harmful elements in the social structure--interpretative analysis--emphasizing a micro level human interactions and social symbols on the basis that the world is socially constructed and the reality exists only through the member's relationship with other members, language, knowledge, etc--and critical sociology--as seen in Marxism and feminism, analyzes fundamental structural inequality of the society and aims to subvert the underlyin
Read more

Bassist Stanley Clarke

Trio! Stanley Clarke, Bass Béla Fleck, Banjo Jean-Luc Ponty, Violin ...at Chicago Symphony Center A week ago, I told my friend that it was not easy for me to appreciate the bass itself because the tone tends to be very low and never predominant. But today, I need to change what I said. Most of all I haven't seen a more wonderful picture of a man with a bass than tonight. The big instrument always seemed to suspend the player in an awkward position. But Mr. Clarke dominates the instrument and plays with it. The gigantic instrument sometimes becomes a drum with trembling strings or sometimes becomes a guitar which seems to be passed onto a Spanish flamenco music player. All the time he looks much more passionate than any flamenco dancer. I am deeply impressed that one can explode such dynamic sound and rhythm from the bass. Mr. Ponty also presents violin sound which I never heard before. It seems that he doesn't care making beatiful melody and he likes to go beyond the tone withi
Read more

Red panda

Image
  The watercolor master classes were over last week. It wasn't so easy to get up before 4 am to sit on the zoom meetings, but once they started, I enjoyed them. An early bird was not my life style, but I think I can enjoy it with help of a nice strong coffee with milk. After the classes were over, I began to watch the wildlife course videos that were added to the classes. Yesterday, I painted along a red pander and then painted the same subject by myself. I am happy that it turned out. I am a little more confident now. I can make muddiness for my advantage. 
Read more