The Аbbe Antoine Frangois Prevost's semi-autobiographical novel Les aventures du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut supplied the inspiration for stage works by a number of distinguished composers. Before Massenet, Auber had made an opera of it and Наlevу a ballet. And after the present work, Puccini wrote an opera on the subject described in this book, and still later Massenet himself came back to the same theme in Le portrait de Manon—a one-act sequel that has never been very popular.
 

There is no question, however, about the popularity of Manon (a title which Massenet claimed he had copyrighted: the other operas are called Manon Lescaut). After Faust and Carmen it is the most popular French opera there is, both in and outside of France. It is also Massenet's most durable work, and one for which he felt a particular affection. Perhaps one reason is the lively personal attraction he seemed to feel for the character of the attractive and unfortunate heroine.
 

In his memoirs the composer tells two stories that seem to be to the point. The first has to do with the time when he was composing the score. On a walk, one day，he saw a florist’s assistant with sparkling eyes who, he imagined, was yearning for rich pleasures beyond her station. "There she is," he said to himself. “That is Manon.” And he goes on to tell how he kept the image of that girl in his mind during the entire composition of the score, even though he had never seen her before and never saw her again.
 

The other story has to do with casting the production. His first thought was of Mme. Miolan-Carvalho, the wife of his impresario and a fine artist. (She was the original Marguerite in Gounod's Faust.) However in 1884 she was fifty-six, too old to undertake the role of a fifteen-year-old girl. The gallant Massenet, intent on getting her into the picture somehow, dedicated the score to her.
 

Next he thought of a young soprano named Vaillant, to whom he showed parts of the score. Unfortunately, when the time came, she was appearing in an operetta, and her manager would not release her. But even while he was talking to the manager in the lobby of the theater, a familiar figure kept passing by, newly arrayed in a gorgeous hat (a gray one, with lots of roses on it).
 

“Heilbronn!” I cried (so go the memoirs).

“Herself.”

‘You still sing?” I asked hen

“No, I am rich; and yet, shall I admit it to you? I miss the theatre. It haunts me. Ah, if I found a good part — !"

“I have one: Manon.”

“Manon Lescaut?”

“No, just Manoii. That tells the entire story.”

Manon

“Can I hear the music?”

""Whenever you like.”
 

That very night Massenet played and sang the score for her, finishing at half-past four in the morning. At its close the widely experienced but still youthful soprano was moved to very real tears. “It is my life,” she said. “But it is my life— that!"
 

That is how Marie Heubronn happened to be engaged to create the role. Her performance, like the opera itself, was an enormous success, but the soprano died after appearing m it some eighty times. Massenet was deeply grieved. "I preferred," he wrote, "to stop the performance rather than to see Manon sung by another.” 
 

The stoppage at the Орerа Comique was of considerable duration, for the theater burned down shortly afterward and did not revive Manon till ten years later. Meanwhile, it became a hit pretty much all over the world, and wnen the Орeга Comique did finally get back to it, it did so with a will. It has now had some two thousand performances at that theater alone and is still a staple of the repertoire.