Werther from Vienna

 

Bertrand de Billy (conductor)
Andrei Serban (stage director), 

Piotr Beczała | Werther 
Clemens Unterreiner | Albert 
Gaëlle Arquez | Charlotte 
Daniela Fally | Sophie 

The Wiener Staatsoper has live streamed Werther with Piotr Beczala.  I have only really liked this opera with Jonas Kaufmann, but Piotr seems like the right type to carry it off.  We have soccer balls and hula hoops, so it must be at least the 1950s.  The stage is filled with a gigantic tree which stays through all the scenes.  Do they live in a tree house?  I am pleased to see a piano in Charlotte's bedroom. 

Charlotte seems to be seriously leading him on while telling him she has to marry Albert.  She blows him kisses.  Hmmm.  We are ambiguous about Charlotte.  Werther loves her for her responsible, motherly qualities.  She has married Albert because she promised her mother, but now she seems not to like him.  This Albert is nasty.  She is serious and sad.  Werther has ruined her life.  When one loves someone who cannot love you in the same way, one is obligated to pretend that all is well.  Piotr is excellent in this role but one does not love his Werther.  It is nevertheless a great role for him. 

I have not pictured Charlotte as the mature woman that she is here.  I prefer her as simply the older sister of her mother's many children.  It's too sad.  The emotional dynamic is very strong here.  In life this is too hard.  In opera it is perfect.  They are messing up everything.  

If you want a serious, intense Werther, this is for you.

Werther

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Conductor: Alain Altinoglu
Production: Richard Eyre
Set and Costume Designer: Rob Howell

Werther:  Jonas Kaufmann (tenor)
Charlotte:  Sophie Koch (mezzo-soprano)
Sophie:  Lisette Oropesa (soprano)
Albert:  David Bizic (baritone)

Goethe was 24 when he wrote his novel Die Leiden des Jungen Werther, 1774.  Thus he was virtually a child himself.  It was a raging success which made him very famous for the rest of his life.  For us Goethe is Faust, written later.  For that era he was Werther.

So what is Jules Massenet's excuse?  He was 50 when he wrote his opera Werther, 1893.  This Werther, 2014, when seen from the view of 2020 is simply a sexual harasser.  We know that unrequited love is painful, but do we need to spread the pain to everyone else?  So the question arises:  is he a cad?

Part of our problem with this opera is what a wonderful job Jonas is doing arousing our sympathy.  This is indeed a beautiful version of the opera.  Now that I know who she is, I especially enjoy Lisette Oropesa as Sophie.

Werther from the ROH

Conductor:  Antonio Pappano
Production:  Benoît Jacquot  (same as Paris)

Werther: Vittorio Grigòlo
Charlotte: Joyce DiDonato

It was interesting to me when the announcer explained that it took a long time for Massenet's Werther to become truly popular.  Now it is the most frequently performed of Massenet's operas, passing Manon.

I am not going to write a long review.  This is the same production as the one I saw in Paris.  The music was French enough, but the acting was a bit over the top.  I love Vittorio, but I don't feel that I want Werther to be quite so mad.  Maybe I truly love this opera only when it is Jonas.  I want him to be unhappy but not mad.

Christine Goerke wants to be sure that reviewers don't blame the actors for the acting.  The director, Jacquot, must have approved it.  Some will prefer it this way.

Jonas Kaufmann's Werther

👍🏻
Conductor: Alain Altinoglu
Production: Richard Eyre
Set and Costume Designer: Rob Howell

Werther:  Jonas Kaufmann (tenor)
Charlotte:  Sophie Koch (mezzo-soprano)
Sophie:  Lisette Oropesa (soprano)
Albert:  David Bizic (baritone)

If you have read this blog for long, you will know that I flew to Paris a few years ago to see Jonas Kaufmann sing Werther.  I loved it even more this time live from the Metropolitan Opera in HD.

I liked the production, which moved the time to the late 19th century, very much.  It did what I always say the production is for:  it explained the action.  They staged the overture to show Charlotte's mother dying at Christmas just as they began to sing carols.  This explains why father is teaching the children Christmas carols in the summer.

We know why Werther is at Charlotte's house--he is her date for the ball.  The production shows a small bit of the ball before returning us to the house.  Every scene shows this attention to detail without becoming distracting.  There's a harpsichord because the libretto says there is, but in the 1890s no one would have owned a harpsichord. 

I enjoyed Lisette Oropesa's Sophie very much and find that I could not forgive Werther when he made her cry.  Sophie Koch warmed slowly into the role exactly as a proper Charlotte should.

But you know we are here for Jonas Kaufmann.  This is the main opera where the person who has the mad scene is the man.  In fact the entire opera is about a man going mad for love.  If Jonas wasn't so good looking, we might be more afraid than attracted.  He overwhelms us with his intensity.  If you have seen Werther without Jonas you will know that it needs this intensity.

She called herself SHAR-LOT, while he occasionally called her car-LOT-tuh.  In other words she pronounced her name French and he pronounced it German.  Curious. In his interview he greeted his fans in Germany and Austria and mentioned that opera is the greatest of all art forms.  I couldn't agree more.

(Spoiler alert) The sound went out in the final scene, but we saw after he is dead she walked over and picked up the gun.

I couldn't help noticing things talked about on Twitter.  Perhaps I'll have to stop reading it.  I noticed when the couple who had no other dialog talked about Klopstock.  Klopstock and Ossian were writers who were talked about in Goethe's time. 

I think Kaufmann is the best thing going, and I'm glad there are so many ways for me to see his work.

_________________

I went again.  You knew I would.  Seeing the ending without the rest of the opera just didn't work for me, so I went to see the whole thing again.  He is a genuine phenomenon.  He treats each aspect of the Gesamtkunstwerk that is opera as its own individual art form, raising it to new levels of beauty and brilliance. I think the one in Paris was sweeter.

Klopstock.

Werther the DVD

God in heaven, he is so dreamy. And with a DVD you get closeups.  Remember, watch out for those good girls.

And Ludovic Tézier who sings Albert is no slouch either.

For an actual review of this performance see here. It is a Werther for the ages.
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Two Werthers

You see, there's the opera, and then there's what they make out of it.  The two Werthers are the one in Paris in February and the one in San Francisco in September.  It would be difficult to imagine the same opera could be so different.

Usually reviewers save the singers for last, but I want to make clear both casts were very fine. In Paris Sophie Koch sang Charlotte and Jonas Kaufmann was Werther. In San Francisco Alice Coote was Charlotte and Ramón Vargas sang Werther. All four of them are very fine performers. Koch and Coote are great lyric mezzos. I enjoyed hearing Alice Coote very much.

Jonas and Ramón are both excellent tenors, but stylistically they are at opposite ends of the Fach. Jonas is cool and German. Ramón is hot and Latin. These factors all by themselves are going to change the quality of the experience. The musical quality of each performance was fully in synch with the style of its tenor. In Paris the very cool, very inwardly passionate Jonas Kaufmann was perfectly matched by the inward, lush, cool and impressionistic performance of the Paris Opera orchestra.

In San Francisco the more overtly passionate and southern Ramón Vargas was matched by the far more traditionally Romantic playing of the San Francisco Opera orchestra. In Paris the orchestra never covered Jonas no matter how loudly or softly he sang. In San Francisco they frequently played over Ramón, something that happens unacceptably often in San Francisco.

Werther in San Francisco was musically a pleasure but not the miracle of Paris.

Before I leave the music, "Va! laisse couler mes larmes" was beautifully sung by Alice Coote with an incredible accompaniment on the saxophone. Saxophone at the opera. It completely transformed my sense of the aria.



So that leaves the production. It is a lot easier for me to understand the titles and follow the plot when the titles are in English.

The Paris production was just a collection of large rooms conventionally but sparsely furnished. In SF we have a big square stage with neon all around, and only two ways on and off: a big hole in the floor and a narrow, cluttered obstacle course in one corner. There are telephone poles that turn into trees.

Toward the end there was a WTF moment when three guys line up and shoot themselves all at the same time. Then one of them stayed on the floor and played dead while Vargas got up and finished singing the rest of his part. Charlotte sang to the super on the floor.

Werther is a serious tragedy brought on by trying to do the right thing when emotions don't support it. This Werther is just a bunch of people screwing around. Or dreaming they are screwing around. Or hallucinating they are screwing around. Or some damn thing.

[See Kinderkuchen History 1890-1910]

Clips from Werther

In case you did not get to go to Paris or even if you did, here is a clip. There are a lot more.

You can see why I enjoyed this so much. And his French is also very fine.

Werther

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Massanet's Werther is based on Goethe's novel Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers, 1774, which was the birth of Romanticism. From that day Goethe was one of the most famous people in Europe. He didn't have a similar success until Faust many years later. Everyone in the nineteenth century composed a Faust, but only Massenet seems to have done Werther. By the time of the opera in 1892 Romanticism had run its course. People had been dying on the opera stage for many years.

Bust of Goethe from the Musée d'Orsay.

In the novel the hero's heart is broken and stays broken until he ends his life. Charlotte cannot be blamed. She promised her dead mother to marry Albert, and she must fulfill this promise. Sometimes trajedy cannot be avoided.

At the beginning of the opera Werther is already in love with Charlotte, and they spend the day together. He tells her he loves her, and then her sister cries out that Albert has returned. Oh yes. Albert is her fiancé. Should have, could have mentioned. In the opera she is ambiguous, flirtatious.

In the second act Charlotte marries Albert, and everyone tells Werther (Vair-tair) to cheer up or get out. He chooses to get out.

It is only in the third act that Charlotte truly comes to life. She reassured her husband there were no regrets but finds that she cannot forget Werther. Who writes. He tells her he is alone and in despair. Then he appears and woos her again. The opera character is more manly than the whiner of Goethe's novel. She panics and leaves.

He returns to his hovel and shoots himself. She finds him and there is an extended death scene.

How is one to explain the extreme beauty of this performance at the Paris Opera? It is a question of atmosphere. Werther concerns itself primarily with the interior landscape of the hero's mind. It is all a gentle romantic dream that turns to despair and self destruction. All of the components combined to express this interior landscape.

The production contributes with its cool, bare, minimalist sets.

Anne-Catherine Gillet as Sophie, Sophie Koch as Charlotte, Michel Plasson conductor, Jonas Kaufmann as Werther, Ludovic Tézier as Albert. They are standing in front of the set for the last scene.

And then there is the masterpiece of Michel Plasson's conducting and the almost impressionistic effect of the orchestral playing. The orchestra actually received the biggest ovation with sustained rhythmic clapping before the third act and again at the end. Perhaps it works to conceive it as Impressionism. It is an enormous pleasure to praise a musical concept.


Jonas Kaufmann in this musical context is so much more than a mere singer--he is the spiritual incarnation of the interior landscape that is Werther. They none of them struggle against the hero's inevitable destruction but allow themselves to be swept away.

It was a masterpiece beyond my wildest imaginings. Werther will never be the same.

Interior of the Opera Bastille from my seat.