Adaptations of Manon Lescaut

The French novel Manon Lescaut (1731) by Antoine François Prévost has been adapted many times into stage plays, ballets, operas, and films. Manon Lescaut tells a tragic love story about a nobleman (known only as the Chevalier des Grieux) and a common woman (Manon Lescaut). Their decision to live together without marrying is the start of a moral decline that also leads to gambling, fraud, theft, murder, and Manon's death as a deported correction girl in New Orleans.

The first adaptation was a theatrical comedy in 1772. Early theatrical and operatic adaptations were not particularly successful, but in the nineteenth century, several major operas were produced. The most renowned adaptations of Manon Lescaut are the operas by Daniel Auber (1856), Jules Massenet (1884), and Giacomo Puccini (1893). Film adaptations followed as soon as the medium was invented, beginning with a 1908 silent film adaptation of Puccini's opera. Early adaptations were period films, set in the eighteenth century; later film adaptations translate the novel's story to a contemporary setting.