Manon and the Libertines

Sir Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon is set in one of the most notorious periods of French history: the Regency era under Philippe d’Orléans. Pre-revolutionary France was ripe with corruption, and this is reflected in the trajectory of Manon’s heroine. In the first act, she is an innocent young woman about to enter a convent. By the final act, she is branded a prostitute and dies as a convict in a rotting Louisiana swamp. 

Manon’s source novel is Abbé Prévost’s L’Histoire du chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut (1731). The novel belongs to a tradition of art, philosophy, and culture known as ‘libertine’ or ‘libertinage’. This term was coined by French police in the eighteenth century to describe offences which ‘outraged public morality’. It became linked with the infamous Regency rakes who led decadent lifestyles.

The characters of Manon could well have been taken from real life. One of the celebrities of the day, the Duke de Richelieu, was known for his countless affairs. He performed outrageous acts in the name of pleasure; for example, when he burned down a house in pursuit of a lover. Another aristocratic libertine, the Prince de Conti, boasted of owning 2000 pretty rings, each symbolising an abandoned mistress. 

Prévost’s Manon is similar to Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s famous 1782 novel, Les Liaisons dangereuses, which was called ‘diabolical’ by London’s Monthly Review in 1784. Even Marie Antoinette ordered a copy for her library, but made sure to keep the forbidden book a secret. Prévost’s Manon resembles two female characters from Choderlos de Laclos’s novel, each debauched in the most calculating manner by two libertines. One is a pious married woman who dies after being seduced, and the other a convent-bred girl who is torn from her true love by greed and sex.

Perhaps the most infamous libertine is the Marquis de Sade, whose name forms the base of the word ‘sadist’. While Sade was a controversial figure who liked whips and orgies, his literary works used sexual fantasies as vehicles for wider philosophical discussions about the gender and sexual relations of Regency society. The story of Manon is therefore more than just a tale of seedy decadence; it is also shaped by the concerns of its day. 

These are concerns that MacMillan translates into ballet through his choreography. The tossing and passing of Manon from one man to another highlight the exploitation of women as ‘conquests’ or commodities. When her brother Lescaut sells Manon to the highest bidder, she dances in a sexually-charged pas de trois with him and the rich Monsieur GM, the three of them entwining their legs until Manon is caught between the two men. She is passed from man to man in a bordello; her shoe is dangled underneath the nose of a licentious old man and her body lifted up in the air to be fondled at a party. 

The ongoing contemporary fascination with the sexual lives of Regency rakes is perhaps best exemplified by the popular Netflix series, Bridgerton, and by the continuing presence of Manon in ballet repertoire. While ‘libertinage’ was born in specific historical circumstances, the popularity of Manon ensures that we will always be drawn back into its world of pleasure, decadence, and vice.