Puccini - Manon Lescaut / Gardiner, Vick (Glyndebourne Festival Opera 1997) [DVD] [2011]

Antonio Pappano, in a broadcast from Covent Garden (available on YouTube) makes a good case for this opera being an unsung masterpiece. I wouldn't quite agree, but it certainly deserves to be better known, and at least one recording should be in any Puccini admirer's collection. As for productions on DVD, there is little choice. This is just about it if you are looking for a traditional production that doesn't drag Puccini kicking and screaming into the 21st Century (which never really works, even with La Boheme, which is the only one of the operas that can stand it). Sadly, there is very little to recommend this production from Glyndebourne. The production team, apart from the costume designer, don't appear to have bothered much. Graham Vick, the director, directs by numbers, falling back on embarrassing stock characterisations. The set designer gives us a biscuit coloured box that does service for all the acts with the odd mirror or rock to indicate where we are supposed to be.A wooden Des Grieux and a miscast Manon do nothing to endear this production, or this opera, to anyone watching, and John Elliot Gardiner, an odd choice of conductor, doesn't have the passion or abandon one really needs to make it work. I was bored. Puccini should never be boring.

The original DVD version was in stereo but this is in mono. This is a manufacturing problem by Kultur/Warner (they are identical). I had the exact same problem with their blue-ray issues of Don Carlos and The Makropulos Case - mono sound.