Last Sunday the National Opera of Ukraine premiered Giacomo Puccini’s opera Manon Lescaut. This is a joint Italian-American-Ukrainian production sponsored by the embassies of the US and Italy in Ukraine and the Italian Institute of Culture in Ukraine. Manon Lescaut is one of the most successful operas staged in Puccini’s lifetime. An opera of worldwide acclaim, it is being staged in Kyiv for the first time. The American conductor Keri Lynn Wilson suggested producing Manon Lescaut. Last September Wilson had her Ukrainian debut in Kyiv, brilliantly conducting the opera Turandot.
That show was the beginning of cooperation between the Kyiv opera and the young conductor. Wilson is the first woman to conduct Leipzig’s Gewandhaus Orchestra and to stage another Puccini opera, Madame Butterfly, at the Leipzig Opera. Keri Lynn Wilson’s artistic achievements, especially her varied and intricate symphonic programs, are truly amazing. She has conducted orchestras in Dallas and Montreal, San Francisco and Toronto, Saint Louis and Athens, Los Angeles and Leipzig, Houston and Vancouver, Seattle and Florence, New Jersey and Caracas, and Hong Kong and the Netherlands.
A year ago she began collaborating with the symphony orchestra of Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI). No less impressive is Wilson’s career as an opera conductor. Among her achievements are Guiseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto and Othello, Gaetano Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor, Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca in Italian theaters, Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma in Rotterdam, Puccini’s Tosca in Vienna, and La Boheme in Bilbao, Spain. According to Wilson, the National Opera of Ukraine’s troupe helped her realize her lifetime dream of staging Manon Lescaut, an operatic gem created by the genius Puccini.
The dramatic part of the production was directed by Italo Nunziata, a well-known Italian producer, who has worked in the opera world for about two decades. He is the art director of Teatro Rendano in Cosenza, Italy, and besides teaching, he has written librettos for many ballets. His opera productions are stunning in their variety: Cosi fan tutte by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, La Pietra del Paragone and La Cenerentola by Gioacchino Rossini, and Aida, Rigoletto, Un Ballo in Maschera, and Simon Boccanegra by Giuseppe Verdi. Apart from staging popular and well-known operas, Nunziata has given a new lease on life to some lesser known works, including Gina by Francesco Cilea, L’Olimpiade by Giovanni Pergolesi, and Der vierjaehrige Posten and Die Zwillingsbrueder by Franz Schubert. The latter two productions netted the producer the Franco Abbiati Italian critics’ award.
Manon Lescaut in Kyiv is Nunziata’s second Puccini work. The producer staged the show in a traditional manner, successfully using his ballet-dancing experience to instill every scene, whether intimate and lyrical or crowd scenes — with plastic expression. The production designer is Maria Levytska. Her work is well known to Ukrainian opera and ballet buffs, theatergoers, and film aficionados. Levytska’s imagination is literally inexhaustible. Her costumes for Manon Lescaut were based on Natalia Kuchera’s sketches and portray the 18 th -century era without excessive emphasis or decorativeness.
The chorus conducted by Lev Venedyktov is a key element of the opera. The production taps the Kyiv opera’s best vocal resources, including both well-known and much-loved singers, and young performers. Tetiana Anisimova, Lydia Zabiliasta, and Kateryna Strashchenko are rehearsing the part of the beautiful and tragic Manon, while a constellation of tenors — Oleksandr Hurets, Dmytro Popov, Pavlo Priymak, Andriy Romanchenko, and Mykola Shuliak — are learning to sing the part of des Grieux, a poor student in love. Petro Priymak, Hennadiy Vashchenko and Dmytro Hryshyn will take turns singing the part of the self-interested and base Sergeant Lescaut. The basses Serhiy Mahera, Bohdan Taras, and Serhiy Skubak are ready to sing the part of Geronte de Ravoir, a rich, vengeful man whose feelings have been offended, while Stepan Fitsych, Yuriy Avramchuk, Dmytro Kuzmin, and Serhiy Pashchuk sing the role of the cheerful and noble student Edmond.
The opera’s plot is based on the novel Histoire du Chevalier Des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut by Abbe Prevost. The final version of the libretto, which was written by several authors, was penned by Giuseppe Giacosa and Luigi Illica.
