New York's Heartbeat Opera will present MANON!, a musical theater revamp of the iconic story of love, glamour, and reinvention. Heartbeat takes a radically new approach to Massenet's 1884 French opera ...

Jules Massenet’s classic work received a streamlined English adaptation from Heartbeat Opera, with musical-theater performers and a focus on the seamier side of the 18th-century setting.

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, ...

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 ...

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, ...

First impressions are important, but they shouldn't lead to snap judgment. It is usually wiser to stop and think, but in the world of opera – especially Puccini – lovers tend to fall in love at first ...

If Puccini knew one thing, it’s that nobody got rich by underestimating the public appetite for sex and seediness. In order to make his mark on the operatic world he took the bold decision to ...

However, it has be said that Jude Christian’s production seriously misfires. Often crass and crude, strewn with farcical, pointless bits of business and dressed in a repulsive palette of ...

The past is a deadly weapon.