Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut

Program notes

About the Work

The Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut is a purely orchestral interlude placed between the second and third acts, and it carries the emotional weight of the opera’s tragic turn. In the score Puccini headed it with lines from the Abbé Prévost’s novel and the subtitle ‘The Imprisonment. The Journey to Le Havre’: Manon has been arrested as a courtesan and is about to be deported to the penal colony of Louisiana, and her lover Des Grieux follows her into exile. The Intermezzo bridges that catastrophe wordlessly, gathering up melodies associated with the lovers and lifting them into a surging symphonic meditation on doomed passion. It was with Manon Lescaut, his third opera, that Puccini first found his fully personal voice, and this interlude, composed when he was in his early thirties, is one of the earliest places to hear the lush, aching lyricism that would define him. Outside the opera house it has become a beloved concert piece in its own right.

What to Listen For

Listen for a long-breathed cello and string melody that climbs in great waves toward an impassioned climax: Puccini at his most openly Romantic, with no voices to share the spotlight. The themes are drawn from the lovers’ music, so the Intermezzo plays as a wordless love duet. Notice how Puccini withholds and then releases the full orchestra, and how the harmonies darken as the passion peaks, foreshadowing the desolate desert death that ends the opera.