Scene II. Parlour in the Seminary of St. Sulpice. Nuns and visitors, who have just attended religious service, are praising the sermon delivered by Des Grieux, who enters a little later attired in the garb of an abbé. The ladies withdraw, leaving Des Grieux with his father, who has come in unobserved, and now vainly endeavours to dissuade his son from taking holy orders. Left alone, Des Grieux cannot banish Manon from his thoughts. "Ah! fuyez douce image" (Ah! depart, image fair), he sings, then slowly goes out.
Almost as if in answer to his soliloquy, the woman whose image he cannot put away enters the parlour. From the chapel chanting is heard. Summoned by the porter of the seminary, Des Grieux comes back. He protests to Manon that she has been faithless and that he shall not turn from the peace of mind he has sought in religious retreat.
Gradually, however, he yields to the pleading of the woman he loves. "N'est-ce plus ma main que cette main presse?... Ah! regarde-moi! N'est-ce plus Manon?" ("Is it no longer my hand, your own now presses?... Ah! look upon me! Am I no longer Manon?") The religious chanting continues, but now only as a background to an impassioned love duet—"Ah! Viens, Manon, je t'aime!" (Ah, Manon, Manon! I love thee.)
Act IV. A fashionable gambling house in Paris. Play is going on. Guillot, Lescaut, Poussette, Javotte, and Rosette are of the company. Later Manon and Des Grieux come in. Manon, who has run through her lover's money, counsels the Chevalier to stake what he has left on the game. Des Grieux plays in amazing luck against Guillot and gathers in winning after winning. "Faites vos jeux, Messieurs," cry the croupiers, while Manon joyously sings, "Ce bruit de l'or, ce rire, et ces éclats joyeux" (Music of gold, of laughter, and clash of joyous sounds). The upshot of it all, however, is that Guillot accuses the Chevalier of cheating, and after an angry scene goes out. Very soon afterwards, the police, whom Guillot has summoned, break in. Upon Guillot's accusation they arrest Manon and the Chevalier. "Ô douleur, l'avenir nous sépare" (Oh despair! Our lives are divided for ever), sings Manon, her accents of grief being echoed by those of her lover.
Act V, originally given as a second scene to the fourth act. A lonely spot on the road to Havre. Des Grieux has been freed through the intercession of his father. Manon, however, with other women of her class, has been condemned to deportation to the French colony of Louisiana. Des Grieux and Lescaut are waiting for the prisoners to pass under an escort of soldiers. Des Grieux hopes to release Manon by attacking the convoy, but Lescaut restrains him. The guardsman finds little difficulty in bribing the sergeant to permit Manon, who already is nearly dead from exhaustion, to remain behind with Des Grieux, between whom the rest of the opera is a dolorous duet, ending in Manon's death. Even while dying her dual nature asserts itself. Feebly opening her eyes, almost at the last, she imagines she sees jewels and exclaims, "Oh! what lovely gems!" She turns to Des Grieux: "I love thee! Take thou this kiss. 'Tis my farewell for ever." It is, of course, this dual nature which makes the character drawn by Abbé Prévost so interesting.
"Manon" by Massenet is one of the popular operas in the modern repertoire. Its music has charm, and the leading character, in which Miss Farrar appears with such distinction, is both a good singing and a good acting rôle, a valuable asset to a prima donna. I have an autograph letter of Massenet's written, presumably to Sibyl Sanderson, half an hour before the curtain rose on the première of "Manon," January 19, 1884. In it he writes that within that brief space of time they will know whether their hopes are to be confirmed, or their illusions dissipated. In New York, eleven years later, Miss Sanderson failed to make any impression in the rôle.
The beauty of Massenet's score is responsible for the fact that audiences are not troubled over the legal absurdity in the sentence of deportation pronounced upon Manon for being a courtesan and a gambler's accomplice. In the story she also is a thief.
The last act is original with the librettists. In the story the final scene is laid in Louisiana (see Puccini's Manon Lescaut). The effective scene in the convent of St. Sulpice was overlooked by Puccini, as it also was by Scribe, who wrote the libretto for Auber's "Manon." This latter work survives in the laughing song, "L'Éclat de Rire," which Patti introduced in the lesson scene in "Il Barbiere di Siviglia," and which Galli-Curci has revived for the same purpose.