The focus of interest in this new recording of Manon Lescaut must be Dame Kiri Te Kanawa's assumption of the title-role. She sang it in the Royal Opera's 1984 production, conducted by Giuseppe Sinopoli but was absent from the subsequent DG recording, in which she was replaced by Mirella Freni. Her voice is more sheerly beautiful than Freni's, and in many pages of the score, particularly in the first two acts, her fine sense of line and dynamic shading and the refinement of her quiet singing make her worthy of the most exalted comparisons. From the beginning to the end of the opera she never makes an ugly sound and her phrasing is often exquisite: listen to the middle section of her Act 4 aria, the passage (''Terra di pace...'') in which Manon reflects on her shattered hopes of finding a new life in America, and you may well conclude that the role has never been more ravishingly sung.
For a Manon who is movingly real as well as vocally lovely, however, she lacks two qualities. The first is the ability of the true dramatic spinto voice to open out thrillingly when it seems at the limit of its resources. Freni has this (at the risk of a hard edge to the tone); in the Serafin set on EMI Callas has it (the risk here is that notorious wobble, of course); in the Bartoletti recording (also EMI) Caballe has it in such abundance that the voice at times sounds a bit too big for the role in its most opulent or passionate moments Te Kanawa sounds just a shade too small for it. Her other lack is sheer dramatic intensity. She does not sing impassively, nor does she eschew vocal acting (not many sopranos have sounded so elegant yet so amused in the ironic couplets addressed to Geronte in Act 2) but the desperation of Act 3 and the deathly exhaustion of Act 4 elude her. Freni and Callas both achieve much more in these latter scenes by taking the risk of making less than beautiful sounds. Caballe on the whole does not and in this comparison Te Kanawa gains by the greater vulnerability her less opulent voice implies.
Her Des Grieux, Carreras, sings with less apparent strain than one might have expected (the set was recorded not long before his recent severe illness) but he projects only generalized vehemence and ardour with his over-loud and undernuanced singing; as usual there are just sufficient moments of poetry to demonstrate what he could make of the role if he were less intent on proving himself a bronze-voiced tenore robusto. Coni, a singer new to me, makes a firmly sung and efficiently characterized Lescaut, there are two characterful and elegant lyric tenors, Matteuzzi and Gaifa, among the lesser roles, and Zimmermann makes an acceptable if plummy Singer in the Act 2 divertissement; of the septuagenarian Italo Tajo's wobbly and unfocused Geronte the least said the better. Chailly has a lively and intelligent way with the score, less dramatic and less pungently detailed than Sinopoli's (but by the same token more acceptable to those—myself not included—who find Sinopoli wilful or eccentric). The Bolognese orchestra are good, the chorus not quite up to the standards of Covent Garden (Sinopoli), La Scala (Serafin) or the Ambrosian Opera Chorus (Bartoletti). The recording is finely balanced and very clear.
For an account of Manon Lescaut which comes fully to terms with the opera's huge contrasts of colour and mood I would unhesitatingly choose Sinopoli: Freni has her shrill or chesty moments but uses them in the service of an uncommonly involved and involving performance, Domingo is an intelligent and often subtle Des Grieux and Bruson one of the best Lescauts on record. Serafin's set is Callas's, of course, and her decision to play the Manon of Act 2 as a spoiled minx is a distinct drawback (Te Kanawa is well-nigh ideal here) but in the latter acts she is intensely moving and her Des Grieux, di Stefano, wipes the floor with most of his rivals past and present: in Act 4 he has a concerned tenderness for Manon that the others can only sketch, his debonair charm in ''Tra voi belle'' is in this company incomparable and (rarest of virtues among tenors) he never sings past the limits of his voice. The mono recording however, is rather harsh and restricted. The other EMI set has Caballe in gorgeous if somewhat grande dame-like form, unmatchable for sheer limpid richness, Domingo is less subtle, at times rather awkwardly controlled but audibly younger voice than for Sinopoli, but a conductor, Bartoletti, who seems only intermittently interested in the score. I would place the newcomer second to Sinopoli (because the recorded sound of the Serafin is disappointing, and because it is only in Act 3 that Callas convinces you that Manon is really her part) but I suspect that I shall play it hardly less often. Te Kanawa does not plumb the depths of Manon's tragedy, but she scales the heights of the role with winning ease.'