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Music

Where was the sex? Opera Holland Park’s Manon Lescaut reviewed

15 June 2019

9:00 AM

15 June 2019

9:00 AM

Where was the desire, the frisson, the flicker of attraction? Hell, where was the sex? I ask because a week spent at the seedier end of the romance spectrum has left me feeling profoundly unsatisfied. Two classic femmes fatales — Puccini’s convent-girl manqué Manon Lescaut and Janacek’s dark-eyed gypsy Zefka — had their chance to beguile and blew it.

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