Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Manon's Choice

2008; Oxford University Press; Volume: 24; Issue: 1-2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/oq/kbp012

1476-2870

Laura Protano-Biggs,

Theatre and Performance Studies

In what is recognized as one of the most ingenious concertato finales of the fin de siècle, the heroine of Puccini's Manon Lescaut, denounced for sexual misdemeanors, queues with other wanton women but then walks alone from the prison that houses her to an even more inimical enclosure: a vessel that will deport her to Louisiana.1 As the curtains open on the third act, these structures impose themselves on an otherwise bare and dim square at Le Havre, concealing the open waters behind. Bit by bit, the scene is lit to simulate dawn, until a roll call is announced and a crowd amasses which soldiers press into the square's recesses. The women are mute, but their bodies are articulate: the contemporary staging manual that accompanied the first performance, the so-called disposizione scenica, instructs that as their names are called, Elisa “modestamente e tranquillamente va al suo posto” (modestly and calmly takes up her place); that the lascivious Giorgetta “dà una occhiata provocante al Sergente” (winks provocatively at the Sergeant) while Regina passes “pavoneggiandosi con civetteria” (strutting flirtatiously).2 Amongst them a woman called Violetta slips by, reincarnated from the midcentury and Verdi's La traviata.