Manon Lescaut

Manon Lescaut, an opera in four acts premiered in 1893 at the Teatro Reggio in Turin, is based on the work L’histoire du chevalier des Grieux et Manon Lescaut (1731) by Abbé Prévost, which was also the inspiration for the opera Manon by Jules Massenet. Manon Lescaut was Puccini’s third opera and the one that represented his first major success. It brought him lasting fame and marked the beginning of a fruitful collaboration with librettists Luigi Illica and Giuseppe Giacosa, with whom he would write three masterpieces: La bohème (1896), Tosca (1900), and Madama Butterfly (1904).