Manon

“For Manon I could have given up my hopes of heaven itself,” declares her lover des Grieux—after utterly ruining himself for her and following her into a destitute exile in an alien country. In Massenet’s adaptation of Abbé Prévost’s novel, Anna Moffo is a perfect Manon—beautiful, enticing, and offering the promise of pleasure that makes everything else fade into insignificance. The great Nicolai Gedda sings her enthralled lover. Thomas Schippers conducts the glittering, sumptuous score that brings to life the story from its heady beginning to its heart-wrenching end.