Massenet: Manon (complete opera recorded in 1983)

93 Minutes

"[Gruberova] has spoilt her audience with her irresistible high notes and crystalline coloratura...the casualness with which she played the coquette...culminating in her ensnarement of her beau, who was on the verge of entering the priesthood." (Süddeutsche Zeitung)

Filmed live at the Vienna State Opera in December 1983, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's elegant staging of Manon captures all the pathos of Massenet's masterpiece Adam Fischer leads an all-star cast featuring the incomparable Edita Gruberova in the title role and the brilliant Francisco Araiza as Le chevalier des Grieux.

Massenet's Manon was immensely successful from the outset, and it has remained a hit ever since its world premiere in Paris in 1884

"Araiza brought to the part the sensual timbre of his tenor, while enthralling the house with lightning-quick changes from brilliant high notes to unusually delicate diminuendos that died away to nothing" (Süddeutsche Zeitung)