By 1884, Abbé Prévost’s L’Histoire du Chevalier des Grieux et de Manon Lescaut had already inspired a popular new operatic adaptation by Jules Massenet. Puccini’s desire to set the story in Italian proved quite difficult, requiring input from no less than five librettists and his publisher, Giulio Ricordi, to arrive at a final result. The story centers on a naïve young woman who struggles to resolve her conflict between true love and a life of comfort and luxury. The original story is set in France in the 1720s; Richard Eyre’s production updates the time to the occupation in the 1940s.