Thursday, June 25, 2009

December 02, 2006: Psychoanalysis at the Opera

Following the final matinee of their current production of Puccini's Manon Lescaut, the San Francisco Opera is joining forces with two members of the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute & Society, Linda Lagemann and Milton Schaefer, for "an exciting psychoanalytic discussion" of the opera. Now I am in favor of anything that helps opera audiences to pay more attention to what is happening (either on the stage or in the pit); so I would have preferred such a discussion to take place before the final performance. However, where this particular opera is involved, it is worth asking these analysts just whose psyche they plan to analyze.

Opera fans know that two operas in the standard repertoire have been written about Manon. The really rabid fans probably also know that Puccini's publisher went to great lengths to make sure that Puccini's project would be substantially different from the earlier opera by Massenet, since that earlier production had become a major hit in the opera world. Anyone with this background probably knows that Manon was the creation of the Abbé Prévost. What is probably less well known is that the "novel" Manon Lescaut is actually Books V through XI of Mémoires d'un homme de qualité qui s'est retiré du monde. I have never encountered this work in its entirety, nor met anyone who has done so. I am not even sure of the total number of Books in it, but I think I found one source that said it was twelve. The general consensus it that the whole thing is a rather tedious autobiographical meditation (confessional?), which would have been totally forgotten had not the Manon portion been extracted and become one of the most heavily-sold books of all time in France.

This is where things get interesting. First of all it would appear that Manon is based on one of Prévost's own (probably unhappy) memories. She may even have been the reason he decided to withdraw from the world. Secondly, Prévost's text, because it is autobiographical, is a first-person narrative. The account of Manon is told by the young "man of quality" who was smitten by here, the Chevalier Des Grieux. So, if we are going to talk about psyches, the first question we need to ask is whether or not Des Grieux is a reliable narrator. My guess is that he is not. I would bet that Prévost lusted after some peasant girl in his callow youth, never mustered up the courage to talk to her, and wove an elaborate story around her instead. In other words Manon stands in relation to Des Grieux/Prévost somewhat the way Dulcinea stands in relation to Don Quixote. However, Prévost is more interested in the primrose path to perdition than in chivalry; so Manon becomes the instrument of his cautionary tale.

I would now guess that Puccini never bothered to think about such details. Indeed, the documentary evidence seems to indicate that he was a smitten with Manon and Des Grieux was. So here he is taking on the fictitious product of an unreliable narrator (and, while this was one of his earlier works, I find more depth in the music than in his more warhorse-like operas). So who belongs on the analyst's couch?

Puccini is my number-one candidate. Anyone who can get that wrapped up in an imaginary character has got to have a psyche worth investigating! I would even argue that, at the end of the day, Puccini is probably a far more interesting figure that either Des Grieux or his creator Prévost. Indeed, if we could get to the bottom of Puccini's obsession with Manon in youth, we might have a better understanding of why, at the end of his life, he decided to take on the suitor-killing Turandot!

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