Le portrait de Manon is an opera in one act by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Georges Boyer. It is a sequel to Massenet's 1884 opera Manon, widely regarded to be his masterpiece. Le portrait de Manon, however, hardly achieved even a fraction of the original's acclaim and is rarely performed today. The opera was first performed at the Opéra Comique in Paris on 8 May 1894. After its premiere the work was performed at La Monnaie in November 1894 and the Teatro del Fondo in Naples in December 1894. The work received its United States premiere at The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on 13 December 1897. The Opéra Comique revived the opera in 1900 and it was mounted at the Théâtre Lyrique in September 1922, after which the work fell out of the performance repertory. After a more than 60-year absence from the stage, Le portrait de Manon was mounted at La Fenice on 13 April 1985. Four years later the Opéra de Monte-Carlo staged the work. The opera was most recently revived by the Glimmerglass Opera in 2005.
Famous quotes containing the word portrait:
“Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called “self-interestedness.” This was not a portrait of man “warts and all.” It was all wart.”
—George F. Will (b. 1941)