A Case Study of Love vs. Temptation – Manon at the San Francisco Opera

I am really looking forward to tonight. This is the SF Ballet premier of Kenneth MacMillan’s piece that premiered 1974 at Covent Garden in London.

Manon is set to music by Jules Massenet. It tells the tragic story of Manon Lescaut, a young woman who chooses a life of wealth and luxury with the older Monsieur G.M., over love with the impoverished student Des Grieux before everything falls apart and astray with many deaths. The ballet explores themes of love, temptation, morality, and the consequences of choices.

I find it fascinating that the theme of a beautiful woman torn between pure love and wealth comes to stage so often. Moulin Rouge in film, La Traviata in opera and The Great Gatsby in literature, just to name a few.

Act 1 was beautifully danced. It’s amazing how the duality of “pure love” and “wealth” is reflected in the music, too.

Reviewing the Reviews

Rachel Howard’s SF Chronicle review “Misogyny or masterpiece? ‘Manon’ at S.F. Ballet feels all too relevant” opens with the relevance of this piece for our time, wondering whether this could be set in a certain resort in Palm Beach vs its actual setting in 18th century France.

I love her description of the cast:

The company is giving one of the tightest, whip-crack momentous ensemble performances in its institutional history — everyone on stage knows exactly what they are doing at every second and why, and they make MacMillan’s action-dense scenes fly by with naturalness and ease.

Rachel’s review makes another political reference 1to Matt Gaetz when describing Act 1 that made me laugh:

By the end of that act she’s both fallen into an innocent, easy attraction to an under-financed theology student, Des Grieux, and been promised by her brother as potential mistress to a stalker with less charm than Matt Gaetz.

Myles Thatcher indeed played that role chillingly, and in the performance I saw Manon was beautifully played by Sasha De Sola, matching perfectly with guest dancer Alban Lendorf. My favorite scene from a dancing perspective was actually Esteban Hernandez’s “drunk scene” during a ball in which he perfectly showed an inebriated man that tumbled in perfectly set mis-steps.

I didn’t think as much as Rachel Howard about the character of Manon, who comes over less conflicted than calculating.

MacMillan himself described her as “absolutely amoral” and once explained his understanding of her thus: “Manon is not so much afraid of being poor as ashamed of being poor.

I simply enjoyed the dancing and the music, but couldn’t help but agree with Howard’s conclusion;