It seems to have been a century before anyone thought of taking Abbe Prevost's famous novel as the basis for a musical work. Halevy wrote a Manon Lescaut ballet in 1830, but the first operatic treatment was Auber's, produced at the Opera-Comique in 1856: it was the 35th opera of his 40-year association with Scribe, the most famous librettist in Paris. Both dramatically and musically it is a simpler affair altogether than Massenet's or Puccini's later versions of the story. Apart from Act 3, set in Louisiana, the action centres entirely on the Marquis d'Herigny's pursuit and acquisition of Manon, despite her love for des Grieux. He, poor man, is accident-prone in a big way: a windfall of money to him is squandered at the gaming-tables by the rascally Lescaut, Manon's cousin; as a result he is about to be arrested for not paying for a supper to which he had invited his friends; to acquit his debt he enlists in a regiment whose colonel is the Marquis, but finds himself confined to barracks, in trying to escape from which in order to see his beloved he strikes an NCO; he is sentenced to death, but Manon secures his freedom, on a bureaucratic technicality, by consenting to become the Marquis's mistress; this leads to a quarrel with the Marquis in which the latter is wounded, whereupon des Grieux and Manon are both arrested. Manon is deported to Louisiana, he follows her, and with the help of friends from their Paris days they escape, only for Manon to die in his arms in the desert.
This opera is just the job for those who want plenty of tunes, florid singing and little else (certainly no complications of characterization). Virtually the entire work is homophonic (i.e. consisting only of an accompanied 'top line'); but Auber's fluent and graceful melodic gift, along with effective harmony and orchestration, holds the interest. Almost the only familiar aria in the work is Manon's laughing song (the Bourbonnaise): it is, however, but one of a number of coloratura solos, which Mady Mesple despatches with great agility and accuracy in her bright-toned voice, though her fast vibrato on sustained notes becomes rather obtrusive. She is backed by a more than competent cast and an only moderate orchestra, the noisiness of whose brass is accentuated by the Salle Wagram's resonance but should have been restrained by the conductor: indeed, in a couple of numbers the orchestral level in general is too loud for the voice it should be accompanying. The linking spoken dialogue is extremely well done, with a sense of characterization and intelligent timing, but in a noticeably different acoustic from the sung parts (in which numerous cuts have been made)—and even the ambience of singers and orchestra sometimes audibly differs.
As to the production, it can only be called inept. In scenes between two people, however near they should be to each other dramatically, they are mostly placed at the extreme right and left of the sound spectrum (just like the ping-pong effects of early stereo): the positioning of characters can change between their dialogue and the succeeding musical number; and on two or three occasions the characters abruptly and unaccountably shoot across from one channel to the other. The equivalent of a film continuity girl was badly needed here. Still, this is the only recording of this work (so typical of its period), so one needs to tolerate these shortcomings: if you don't expect too much from an opera, it makes quite agreeable listening.'