Review: Opera San Jose’s ‘Manon’ takes off like a jet, then levels off
By Richard Scheinin

rscheinin@mercurynews.com
Posted: 09/13/2009 04:17:14 PM PDT
Updated: 09/13/2009 06:56:19 PM PDT
All photos by Pat Kirk.

Krassen Karagiozov as Lescaut and Alexander Boyer as the Opera San Jose’s new production of “Manon” takes off like a jet. It’s a refreshing French confection. It’s chiffon. It’s lace. It’s sexy. With great tunes and stylish singing, it goes down like a cool lemonade— at least for its first hour at the California Theatre, where “Manon” opened Saturday to kick off the company’s 26th season.

Along with “Carmen” and “Faust” and one or two others, “Manon,” by Jules Massenet, is a mainstay of the French repertoire. Its music is exhilarating. And its story is a keeper: It’s about the young beauty, Manon, torn between true love and luxury. She chooses love, then luxury, then love again. But her impetuousness leads to a nose-dive and — hey, this is opera — death.

Still, for the first hour it’s about the blossoming of love.

And with the opening night cast (one of this production’s two rotating casts), director Dianna Shuster gives us a kittenish couple in the throes of love: soprano Khori Dastoor as Manon, tenor Alexander Boyer as the Chevalier des Grieux, a student. They fall into each other’s arms in about three seconds, and then we’re off: Dastoor and Boyer, resident artists with the company, flying about in a series of exquisitely lyric arias and duets.

They cuddle. They lounge in bed. Until our fickle heroine gets bought off by a rich stud, De Brétigny (mellifluous baritone Adam Meza), who is part of a plot to abduct Chevalier — thereby bringing Manon into the stud’s 24-carat lair. At last, she’s rich.

But she is complicit in the abduction. And now the story, in its final 90 minutes, darkens: Manon grows progressively complex, a woman of spirit and ambition, of conflicting desires, and very self-aware; she understands the choices she makes and her failings.
Saturday, it was Dastoor who carried the show from this point forward.

Mirroring the deepening of Manon’s character, the soprano’s voice took on new layers, sparkled with new colors. This is her third season with Opera San Jose, and Dastoor has been learning new tricks: Saturday, her pianissimi (whispered signings) were beautifully controlled — and riveting. Dastoor held the stage with a murmur. Her acting was as confident and expressive as her singing.

Boyer, however, isn’t so comfortable in his body. As the innocent student, he was excellent, a goofy guy in love, singing with sweetness, warmth and power.

But as the Chevalier whose life has come asunder — he becomes a priest after the abduction, then rejoins Manon in a life of gambling and social extravagance — Boyer got stuck. He was physically stiff — Little Lord Fauntleroy in his satin suit — and seemed blocked in his efforts to go deeper into the role.

Likewise, the orchestra, crisp and flowing through the first hour, didn’t break new ground as the action twisted onstage. Conductor Joseph Marcheso might want to stir the pot, set those emotional undercurrents roiling as the plot darkens.

Hats off to Larry Hancock, the company’s general manager and production director, who takes on an additional role here: set designer. Within the walls of his 18th-century classical rooms, singing women roamed in lavish Watteau gowns, men in their powdered wigs. The chorus was exuberant — especially the women, whose ensemble piece in the second act was intricate and lovely.

As the Count des Grieux, father of the Chevalier, bass Silas Elash was grandly sonorous. As Lescaut, Manon’s cousin, baritone Krassen Karagiozov was suave, for sure, but lacked bite; Lescaut should be a rougher character.

As Guillot de Morfontaine, the lech who ultimately brings down Manon, tenor Bill Welch hammed it up — and craftily revealed just how repulsive this character really is. His dotty lady admirers (soprano Jillian Boye and mezzo-sopranos Cathleen Candia and Betany Coffland) formed a virtuoso power-trio in close harmony.

In the end, director Shuster, whose “The Elixir of Love” was a delight last season, hasn’t quite unlocked the secrets to “Manon.”

She has also made some questionable cuts, eliminating an entire festive scene in which Manon sings her two biggest numbers, one of them a coloratura extravaganza in which she boasts of her beauty and material acquisitions. Like a beanbag, this aria has been dropped by Shuster into a later scene, where Dastoor, as might be expected, sang it with aplomb.