As much as I do have a soft spot for Thais for the final scene, I consider Manon Massenet's masterpiece, and although Puccini's Manon Lescaut has some of his most beautiful music(ie. Intermezzo, Donna Non Vidi Mai, Sola Perduta Abbandonata), Massenet's opera I do find more plausible in the final act especially.
This Met production of Manon has one too many moments when it was inconsistent, but in other ways it was effective. A lot of the best things about this Manon was musically rather than visually, with the orchestra nuanced and the conducting from Fabio Luisi crisp and efficient especially in the Cours La Reine and Hotel De Transylvanie scenes. The chorus are vocally superb with their shining glory being the Cours La Reine scene, and the final act is very poignant.
I had little to fault the principal singing either. Piotr Bezcala is a suitably ardent and dignified Des Greiux with a very honeyed, classy tone. Paolo Szot is an amusing Lescaut, and Bradley Gavin as De Bretigny was very professional and energetic. The likes of Jennifer Black and Anne-Carolyn Byrd dazzled and the smaller roles are effective. As Count Des Grieux, David Pittsinger is authoritative, biting yet with a sympathetic element. He and Christophe Mortagne in the role of Morfontaine were the most stylish and had the crispest French diction of the entire cast.
Anna Netrebko had impressive moments in the title role, but she had inconsistencies too. With a supporting cast that was so strong I couldn't help thinking of the cast overall that she was the weak link. The voice is dark and expressive, she has a beguiling stage presence and her acting is sexy and moving. However, her diction and colouratura aren't as strong, with her consonants lacking clarity and her vowels too dark and unidiomatic, and while she has the style to sing the colouratura complete with at least two sour notes her intonation is patchy at best.
But it was the sets and staging that spoilt this Manon for me. The costumes are wonderfully glitzy, but the sets were too vertical and tacky for an opera that I often see performed as visually sumptuous, an approach I much prefer and much more suited to the basic story of the opera. The staging had the odd moment, such as the final act and the inspired Madonna/Material Girl-like part, but there are other times where it felt heavy-handed, with the St Sulpice scene lacking in sensuality and the Act 3 quartet having a chaotic nature to it. And while the chorus are great vocally, dramatically they are not so convincing, coming across as mugging at times.
Overall, inconsistent but also effective. 6/10 Bethany Cox