Every Manon needs a strong, passionate lover, and Misha Didyk did his best. It was only in the opera’s final scene, though, that the tenor sufficiently loosened his voice to crest Puccini’s melodies with ease. Didyk’s vibrato spreads easily under pressure, and much of the role of Des Grieux is sung with pressure, especially his surrender to Manon while making love to her in another man’s bed (“Più non posso lottar! Son vinto!” / I can no longer resist! I am conquered!), set to one of the composer’s most ardent, bodice-ripping melodies. Yet Didyk didn’t seize the moment, his voice remaining static and tremulous.

Again, in one of the opera’s more emotional pleas, Des Grieux begs to be taken aboard the prison ship with Manon, crying out, “No! Pazzo son!” (No, I am insane!), but that, too, slipped into mere vocal posturing. While Didyk is a handsome man and cuts a romantic figure onstage, the voice often belies the looks.

Manon’s brother, Lescaut, is frequently played as both a loser and a nuisance, yet baritone John Hancock made him as commanding and as manipulative as his sister, a fine achievement. Veteran bass Eric Halfvarson created another of his incisive characters, Manon’s keeper, the rich old Geronte.

San Francisco Opera’s current Adler Fellows in the cast all made a good showing: tenor Sean Panikkar as Edmondo (in such good voice that you wish he had been the lead), baritone Eugene Brancoveanu as the ship’s caring Captain, Kendall Gladen’s lovely mezzo as the leading Madrigal Singer, Matthew O’Neill as Manon’s ditzy Dancing Master, and Jeremy Galyon as a vibrant-voiced Sergeant. Ian Robertson’s large chorus likewise sang beautifully and vigorously as students, townsfolk, sailors, prostitutes, and guards.

Maestro Donald Runnicles conducted the heavily detailed score with great vitality, moving his musical forces swiftly, especially in the notoriously overwritten first act. (The opera was Puccini’s earliest success, and he was profligate with his scoring as well as his melodies.) Yet every nuance of the flutes, every melancholic turn of the woodwinds, every sparkle of the harp registered amid Runnicles’s vibrant orchestral flow. He rendered the Intermezzo with particular majesty and poignancy.

The audience seemed pleased with Frank Philipp Schlössmann’s handsome production, created for Lyric Opera of Chicago. The 18th century inn appeared spacious and characterful, and Manon’s bedroom glowed in a rich cerulean blue with royal crests of gold. In contrast, the prison pier seemed appropriately dark, dank, and seedy, and the “desolate plain” that Puccini specified for his Louisiana finale stretched out stark and gray to the horizon.

Olivier Tambosi sensitively directed the story, with its many time lapses (Puccini didn’t want to duplicate any scene that Jules Massenet had written into his own opera Manon). It was refreshing to have a director in charge who believed in this 113-year-old piece of theater and felt no need to update or contemporize it. Puccini’s superbly romantic score has been too long absent from Northern California venues, this being the first San Francisco Opera production in nearly two decades.

Comment must also be made on how warm and welcoming the Opera House still looks, some years after its seismic renovation and refurbishment. The golden ceiling of the foyer is splendidly lit, while the great frieze over the proscenium seems fresh and elegant as it frames the stately gold curtain. With these visual improvements, and a return to excellent productions after so long a hiatus, surely returning subscriptions should be on the rise.

(James Keolker is a frequent writer and lecturer on opera, as well as a professor of opera studies at the Fromm Institute for Lifelong Learning at the University of San Francisco.)

©2006 James Keolker, all rights reserved