Massenet And Puccini's "Manon" Image-building Research

In 1731,Manon Lescaut,a novel created by the French writer Prevo,came out.The story tells the love story between the beautiful young girl Manon Lescaut and the noble young Grieux.In 1884,the famous composer Massenet,known as the "treasure of France",wrote the opera Manon based on the novel,which became famous in the first World War.In 1893,Puccini,a famous Italian opera composer,also chose the novel as a script to write the opera Manon Lescaut,which has established his status as an opera master since then.Although there are many examples of different writers choosing the same character image for different creation in history,it is rare and worthy of deliberation that Massenet e and Puccini are in a similar era and equally outstanding,and represent the two opera schools of France and Italy respectively.This paper will focus on the shaping of the image of "Manon" from:The first part will introduce and analyze the plot,creative background and the image of "Manon" in Massenet 's Manon and Puccini's Manon Lescaut,and compare them on this basis.The second part will analyze the two arias in the two operas.In order to facilitate comparison,when selecting aria,two Arias under the same story plot will be selected from the two operas,that is,the story plot of the heroine Manon recalling the past,as samples,The corresponding aria is ‘Goodbye! Lovely little table' in Massenet 's Manon and‘Full of soft curtains' in Puccini's ‘Manon Lescaut'.This part will focus on the comprehensive analysis of the two songs in the same story but not in the same opera,including their background,lyrics,musical form,structure,harmony,texture,singing and so on.The third part will use the analysis of the previous part to further compare the musical style and characterization of the two arias,so as to further explore the similarities and differences between the two composers in shaping the role image of "Manon".