Intermezzo from Manon Lescaut

One of the most poignant episodes in Manon Lescaut - Puccini’s first major success in the opera house - is a purely orchestral piece between the second and third acts. At the end of the second act the frivolous but by no means criminal Manon has been arrested for theft in Paris. In the third act she is in Le Havre awaiting deportation to America, hoping vainly to be rescued by her brother Lescaut and her lover Des Grieux. The music of the Intermezzo - which stands for the time taken by her imprisonment and her journey to Le Havre - is based on themes already heard in the opera. Beginning on expressive solo strings, it rises to a powerfully scored climax and subsides in such a way as to leave little doubt as to Manon’s eventual fate in a desert near New Orleans.