See America First - New Orleans

M. Renaud, a corrupt official, announces female prisoners have freshly arrived, presumably on the same ship that bore Marguerite. One of them is Manon. Marguerite had been her neighbor back in France (where Manon had charmingly read aloud a letter from Gervais, being as Margeurite didn't know how to read!), but Manon quickly cautions her to pretend not to know her. Des Grieux then turns up, having traveled across the ocean on the same ship and then followed Manon as she disembarked. He bribes Renaud to let Manon speak with him...one gold louis per minute. As the reunited lovers rhapsodize, Renaud makes it a trio, happily counting the minutes. Des Grieux spends all his gold on ten minutes' worth of conversation, and then Renaud informs him that, although "De droit cette belle appartient aux colons de la Louisiana" - "By rights, this beauty belongs to the colonists of Louisiana," he intends to take Manon as his own mistress. He raises his cane to strike Des Grieux, who in turns pulls a pistol on him and backs him toward an open cellar door. Margeurite, who has just returned from the wedding ceremony, catches sight of this and helps the lovers lock Renaud in. She then prevails upon her husband to help Manon escape the plantation - Renaud must be released of course as he is an important figure - by escorting her past Renaud's men, swathed in white, as if she - Manon -- is his bride (shades...or should I say veils...of Bellini's 1835 I Puritani, with which librettist Eugène Scribe surely was familiar). Scene 2 finds the escaped Manon and Des Grieux on Puccini's wasteland, with much the same result. However, Auber provided both a happier death for Manon and an almost-saved-by-the-bell irony: Manon and Des Grieux pledge their troth to God before she expires...and, just then, Margeurite, Gervais, and his happy band of slaves appear, just too late to presumably help the couple toward a more forgiving stretch of land.

Victor Herbert's 1910 light opera, Naughty Marietta, is set in New Orleans of around 1750. Marietta has arrived there, not as a prisoner, but as one of a group of "Casket Girls" sent by the king of France to help populate Louisiana by marrying French settlers (and, we must not forget that in Puccini's opera, Des Grieux, when bribing his way aboard ship, is joshed about wishing to populate the colonies,

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