Since Manon was the work by which Puccini's operatic music was first given to the English music-lovers, the following extracts from the critiques which appeared after its first performance in England will be of interest.
There is nothing which brings back the past so vividly as the fascinating process of turning up back files of daily papers. The actual day and all the "common round" come back like a living thing; so many of the "trivial tasks" seem to assume quite a special importance of their own. To read the advertisements, the announcements of concerts, theatres and picture galleries, is to remember events and pleasant moments which have long passed out of one's mind. Speaking as a journalist, the astonishing thing to me is that the daily paper of twelve years ago or so should seem such an old-fashioned thing to look at. One does not feel this with regard to the journals of a far more remote age. It is only these few recent years that seem to have rushed along at such a fearful pace.
The Morning Post calls attention to the enterprise shown by producing a new work on the opening night of the season and promising another—Verdi's Falstaff to wit—within the first week.
Mr. Arthur Hervey, its critic, says: "Now that Italian composers have once more come to the fore we may expect to be well provided with operas from the quondam land of song, and now the home par excellence of the melodramatic opera. Mascagni and Leoncavallo having been duly welcomed, it is now the turn of Puccini, the much applauded author of Manon Lescaut." After pointing out the differences in the two books, he says that they offer the same amount of similarity the one to the other as do those of Gounod's Faust and Boïto's Mefistofele. "The seeds of Wagnerian reform have not fallen on barren ground. Puccini reveals himself in Manon as a composer gifted with strong dramatic power, possessing an apparently innate feeling for stage effect and considerable melodic expression. His score is exempt from the crudities and vulgarities from which certain modern Italian operas are not free. The entire first act is treated with a wonderful lightness of touch. In the grand duet between Manon and Des Grieux in the second act, the composer has fully risen to the height of the situation. His music is full of melody and passion. It ends in a decidedly Wagnerian fashion which evokes recollections of Tristan und Isolde. We have only singled out a few salient features in a work that is remarkable from many points of view, not the least of which is its sincerity of purpose, and we cordially congratulate the composer upon having made so successful a debut amongst us."
In contrast to the Times critic, the writer says: "The inevitable intermezzo separates the second from the third act. It reproduces some of the motives heard in the above-named duet, and is extremely effective."
In the Academy of May 19, 1894, Mr. J. S. Shedlock writes: "The composer has really something to say, and has said it to very great, though not the best, advantage. At present he is too strongly influenced by Wagner and by others to display his full individuality. The influence of Wagner is specially marked not so much in the use of representative themes as in phrases and melodies which recall Die Meistersinger, Tristan, and Siegfried. As, for example, the music in the first act, when Manon descends from the coach, or the opening of the intermezzo.... Of the four acts, the second and fourth appear to us the strongest ... the love duet between Manon and Des Grieux is a masterpiece of concentration and gradation, the fine broad phrase at the close, afterwards heard with imposing effect at the end of the third act and with tender expression in the fourth, ought alone to ensure the success of the work.... Of course, in a modern opera an intermezzo is indispensable. Puccini, however, gives to his distinct dramatic meaning: the coda with its orchestration is original and expressive."
The Times said of Manon, on May 15, 1894, that in melodic structure and general cast of its phraseology the new work has many points of affinity with the most popular productions of the young Italian school; but it is far above these in workmanship, in the reality of its sentiment, and, above all, in the atmosphere. It supposes that Puccini is the author of his own book, and on the whole prefers Massenet's libretto, and points out that the climax of the piece, musically, if not dramatically, is the penultimate scene, outside the prison at Havre. The finale to this scene in which occur the comments of the crowd on the prisoners, some of whom are covered with confusion, while others are jauntily defiant, is hailed as the finest number in the work. The weakest thing in the opera is, according to this critic, the intermezzo, but an atonement is made by the opening of the third act. The work, he concludes, amply deserved the very enthusiastic reception it obtained.
Even at this short distance of time it is something of a curiosity to read that the National Anthem was sung, under Signor Mancinelli's direction, at the beginning of the evening by the choristers grouped round a bust of the Queen.