The Taming of Manon and Mimì: Engaging with Women in Puccini's Operas
Creators: name: Siar, Emily
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2014

description: In February 2013, a new production of Puccini’s Manon Lescaut premiered at the Théâtre Royal
de la Monnaie in Brussels, Belgium. The director, Mariusz Trelinski, updated the time period
from the second half of the eighteenth century to the present day, setting the action inside a Paris
Métro station. Keeping in line with common Regietheater practice, sexuality dominated the
stage, with women’s naked bodies perpetually visible. Manon’s interim lover, Geronte, was a
mobster trafficking women in an underground sex ring, and Manon’s deportation scene became a
“human meat auction.” Trelinski’s Manon, sung by Dutch soprano Eva-Maria Westbroek,
entered wearing a red trench coat and dark sunglasses, smoking a cigarette. She was, without
question, “the very image of a prostitute,” a stark contrast to the innocent and girlish Manon
characterized in the beginning of L’Abbé Prévost’s novel, the text on which the opera is based.
This production presented Manon and the women around her as the objects of a persistent and
grotesque male gaze. It attempted to depict a corrupt, misogynistic society, and the barren
wasteland of “New Orleans” became one of our own modern cities, infested with technology and
moral emptiness. As a result, Manon was more the image of a weary, exploited prostitute than
the coquettish, materialistic eighteen-year-old that Puccini likely had in mind.
This production’s explicit engagement with issues of gender poses a disturbing question:
how do we deal with women in opera? A troubling pattern in opera productions and their
reception has led many feminists to believe that opera is an inherently misogynistic and deeply
problematic art form. French philosopher and literary critic Catherine Clément first approached
this issue in the landmark text L’Opéra ou La Défaite des femmes (1979) (Opera, or The
Undoing of Women, 1988). The book seeks to deal with the issue of misogyny in opera:
specifically, the significance of the unfailing “death”—in one sense or another—of the operatic
heroine as the curtain falls. Clément argues that the emotionality of music allows for “risk-free
identification” that discourages scholars and audiences from engaging with opera’s potentially
problematic subject matter. She focuses on opera librettos, but her analyses are sometimes
simplistic and forced, playing into a dichotomy of “good girls,” who conform to the rigid rules
set by their fathers and husbands, and “femme fatales,” women who, as a consequence of
disobeying social codes, are condemned to die night after night. A paradox is created whereby
modern productions, by responding to this type of reading and attempting to vindicate (or not)
opera’s heroines onstage, can actually reinforce a limited view of operatic women and, perhaps,
perpetuate misogyny. With our attention diverted by the allure of naked female bodies or the
empty glamour of a “femme fatale,” we lose the potential complexity of characters like Manon
that exists underneath the spectacle, within the opera’s text and music. As scholars, artists, and
audience members, we are often tempted to view operatic heroines as “good girls” or “bad girls,”
but these one-dimensional labels often overlook the nuances that can be discovered through a
deeper textual and musical analysis.
As feminist music scholarship moves forward in the wake of Clément’s look at operatic
heroines, we continue to struggle with how to deal with these women in light of recent advances,
and continuing discrepancies, in gender equality. Some more recent feminist analyses, rather
than condemning these works as “antifeminist,” point out that the genre can inadvertently
empower women by creating an important space for female vocalism. In an article responding to
Clément’s text, “Opera; or, The Envoicing of Women” (1993), Carolyn Abbate argues that
opera, rather than disempowering women, can actually grant women power onstage by
“unveiling an authorial voice as a woman’s.” This thesis will take feminist analysis in a
different direction, one that seeks to understand gender issues in opera through a pointed analysis
of several of Puccini’s multi-layered works. To assemble a fuller picture of who these women are
beyond shallow stereotypes, we must explore their metamorphoses from the original sources of
their literary genesis to their new identities onstage. Through a case study of Manon Lescaut, La
Bohème, and an interim project, La Lupa, I will engage with several questions that I hope may
contribute to an ongoing discussion of women in opera: What problems did Puccini and his
librettists face in staging these women, what issues do such characters pose for an audience, and
how can we, as performers, make interpretive choices that do them justice? Through my
research, I seek to navigate my intersecting identities as performer and feminist, and it is my
hope that a deeper, more nuanced analysis of operatic heroines can, perhaps, provide insight into
how one can perform these women’s identities in a meaningful way. Rather than seeking to
define these works definitively as “feminist” or “antifeminist,” I hope that a more nuanced
analysis of the issues that these works present will actively contribute to a dialogue that values
women’s stories and seeks to express their value through performance practice.