Kenneth MacMillan's Manon, a heroine punished without moral tidying, returns to the Main Stage at Covent Garden this autumn.
Kenneth MacMillan’s Manon, created for the Royal Ballet in 1974, returns to the Main Stage of the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden from Tuesday 13 October 2026.
MacMillan made the ballet three years into running the company. He took the story from Abbé Prévost’s 1731 novel. A girl on her way to a convent is diverted by a student, then by a richer man, and dies deported in a Louisiana swamp.
The score is assembled from Massenet’s other music, since MacMillan chose not to use the composer’s opera on the same subject. Antoinette Sibley and Anthony Dowell created the leads.
Three pas de deux, among the hardest partnering in ballet, have kept it in the repertoire. Manon wants money and pleasure and is punished out of all proportion, and the ballet never says she deserved it. MacMillan said he was writing a part for a dancer who could act, which the company then lacked.
The run continues until Wednesday 25 November 2026, with relays to cinemas. It overlaps Carmen in the same house, which puts two unrepentant heroines of the nineteenth century on one stage in one season.