Justin Lee Miller

For Heartbeat Opera’s presentation of Massenet’s exquisite "Manon," the co-adaptors Rory Pelsue, who also directs, and Jacob Ashworth, the company’s artistic director, take a scalpel to Massenet’s expansive five-act opéra comique, paring it down to a fleet, intermissionless ninety minutes. In the process, they excise subsidiary characters and the bustling choral tableaux that French opera has traditionally treated as both ornament and social panorama. What remains is not a diminished work but a distilled one: the narrative’s spine emerges with unusual clarity, its emotional stakes thrown into sharper relief by the absence of decorative detours, oh, and it’s performed in English and retitled "Manon!" [more]