Puccini's version of Manon Lescaut was first mounted at the Teatro Regio in Turin on 1st February 1893, the year and month of the first production of Verdi's Falstaff in Milan. The opera proved an immediate success. It was staged at Covent Garden and at the Grand Opera House of Philadelphia the following year. There were subsequent revisions and temporary changes, with alterations in orchestration suggested by Toscanini for performances at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, these last incorporated in the later published score. The libretto itself, effective enough, in spite of its multiple authorship, offers certain problems, not least in the omission of the original second act suggested by Praga and Oliva and set in the Paris apartment of Des Grieux, although what has happened in the interval between the present first and second acts is quickly apparent.
