The thing you really, really need to know about Manon Lescaut before the curtain goes up on English Touring Opera’s new production is that the heroine of Puccini’s opera is going to die of thirst. That idea does a lot of heavy lifting in Jude Christian’s staging. Designed by Charlotte Henery, act one opens in an empty swimming pool with water coolers standing like sentinels around the edge. In act two, the newly sugar-daddied Manon relaxes in a padded pink bath while watching images of splashing liquid on TV. In the final scene, with Manon and her equally doomed lover exiled in the Louisiana desert, it’s almost inevitable that Des Grieux will be flinging empty water-cooler canisters around in ridiculous despair.
Another thing to pay attention to at curtain-up is the sleeping figure slumped over a work desk. “The opera reads to me like a surreal nightmare and so that’s how I’ve chosen to stage it,” writes Christian in the programme – and if that sounds slightly defensive it’s not surprising, as this playful all-a-dream staging doesn’t do nearly enough storytelling.
