Jules Massenet - Werther
Wiener Staatsoper, Vienna - 2017
Frédéric Chaslin, Andrei Serban, Ludovic Tézier, Adrian Eröd, Sophie Koch, Maria Nazarova, Alexandru Moisiuc, Peter Jelosits, Marcus Pelz
Staatsoper Live - 6th April 2017
Andrei Serban productions, or the ones I have seen anyway, are certainly distinctive but hard to associate with any kind of individual style that you might find with other opera-theatre directors. Even though they might seem a little abstract, with stylised modern elements that don't always match the requirements specified in the libretto, Serban's productions nonetheless look good and somehow still often match the tone of the corresponding work fairly well. They aren't traditional and they aren't particularly challenging or experimental, but they get the work done. That's pretty much how you would sum up Serban's production of Werther for the Vienna State Opera.
Peter Pabst's set designs for the Vienna Werther are in fact perhaps less stylised and more naturalistic than most of Serban's other productions. Providing, that is, that you are happy to accept a huge sprawling tree in the middle of the stage not only in the outdoor scenes, but looming there also in the background of Charlotte's otherwise normal living room and in Werther's little bedsit. No one is likely to be put off by such large symbolism in such a Romantic opera where the emotions and entanglements loom large, and it does give the production a certain character that lifts it above the mundane into the realm of the soul. It's the expression of the soul that is what Werther is really about, and it certainly does that at least in Massenet's score.
That grand gesture seems to be enough for Serban, and it's hard to argue with the effectiveness and style with which the production functions and heightens the overheated situations of the drama. The large tree contrasts strongly with the rather suffocatingly stuffy, austere old-fashioned furnishings, costumes and manners. There's a sense that this ever-present looming tree, the enduring symbol of life, nature and solidity comes to present an intense strain on Charlotte when she tries to resist her own nature. With Werther ever present in her mind, the stuffy conformity of her marriage with Albert rightly feels almost unbearably oppressive to Charlotte by the time we come to Act III.
The Vienna production harnesses much of the force of the deeply suppressed erotic charge that Massenet managed to create in Werther. The idea of composing the opera came to the Massenet after attending a performance of Parsifal and soon after visiting the home of Goethe, where he was struck by a passage of 'The Sorrows of Young Werther'. Inspired by his visit to Bayreuth and the sentiments of Goethe's famous work, these two powerful experiences are forged into a deeply romantic and emotionally charged work that captures perfectly the subject and heightened sentiments of Werther.
It's not Parsifal however but Tristan und Isolde that seems to exert the strongest influence over the opera. If there's little that is directly Wagnerian about the score other than the use of leitmotif and musical themes that surge throughout the whole work, there is something of the doomed lovers situation in Werther and Massenet is no less skilled in swirling those charged situations of repressed and unconsummated Romantic desires around in a potent concoction that can only be resolved in death. If Tristan were the only one who drank the potion and Isolde resisted, he would be Werther; hopelessly melancholic at the impossibility of their union. Death can only follow, and there is even an emotional and musical echo of the Wagner's Liebestod in Charlotte's response to Werther's fatal wounding.
Werther is not so much Wagnerian however as a full-blooded expression of German Romanticism, and the true nature of the force of those sentiments is fully delivered by the orchestra of the Wiener Staatsoper under the baton of Frédéric Chaslin. There's no holding back on the huge sweep of the score, but it neither overplays nor seeks to find some kind of subtle naturalism in the situations. The score should be given this kind of full unmediated expression, and so too should the singing.
I've never been totally sold on the baritone version of Werther, but Ludovic Tézier shows here that it's not so much tenor or baritone that matters as who is singing the role and what they can bring to it. Tézier may not have a tenor's romantic allure, but he has the melancholic aspect of Werther in his demeanour, in the haunted inflections of his voice, and his delivery is superb. Charlotte is a role that Sophie Koch sings often and she is one of the best interpreters of the role. There's a little more strain showing in her voice these days, but everything that is required is there. Her delivery of the tumultuous reflections of Act III, for example - so important to the work as a whole - is outstanding. There are good performances and solid casting right down the line, with Adrian Eröd as Albert and Maria Nazarova as Sophie.
The fate or at least the state that Charlotte is left in at the closing notes of the opera are also all-important, in many ways much the same as with Isolde when Tristan expires. Having Charlotte turn the pistol on herself as some other productions have done could certainly be justified as an expression of where her mind is, even if it could be said to be over-playing the drama. Serban's direction for this scene is a little more even-handed or at least proportionate, but having Albert a bystander to the final scene, stomping off in a huff over what he has witnessed rather than being stunned into shock - surely the more likely reaction - tends to take away from where your sympathies and the emphasis ought to lie. It doesn't quite take away however from what has come before, with Koch and Tézier together generating a passionate and intense climax of real Romantic stupor.
Links: Wiener Staatsoper Live
Jules Massenet - Werther
Royal Opera House, 2016
Antonio Pappano, Benoît Jacquot, Vittorio Grigòlo, Joyce DiDonato, David Bizic, Heather Engebretson, Jonathan Summers, Yuriy Yurchuk, François Piolino, Rick Zwart, Emily Edmonds, Vasko Vassilev
Cinema Season Live - 27 June 2016
Inviting and distancing, open but claustrophobic, mannered but intense, intimate and dramatic; Jules Massenet's Werther is all these things, expressing two sides of a compelling attraction in an impossible relationship. It presents two simultaneous points of view, that of Werther and that of Charlotte, the two creating between them an irresistible force that rises up in the huge swells of Massenet's dark Romantic score. It's a fabulously intense and focussed drama that delves deeply into the emotions, and as the Royal Opera's House production shows, it can be a terrific piece of music-theatre.
Benoît Jacquot's production of Werther, first seen at the Royal Opera House in 2004, but well-known also in France and elsewhere from its filmed performance, currently still stands as one of the most successful efforts to get across everything that is great about the work. There is nothing new or revelatory about Jacquot's interpretation and direction of the characters, but in conjunction with Charles Edwards' expressionist sets and lighting that illuminates and amplifies every gesture and sentiment of the players, it does probe the emotional depths of these highly Romantic characters for truth.
In the introduction to the Royal Opera House Cinema Live broadcast, Simon Callow continually referred to Jacquot's production as being cinematic but it's more painterly, striving not for cinematic realism but rather aiming to create an emotional environment that matches the moods and the undercurrents that tug at the protagonists in Massenet's score. Fortunately, it works equally well in both respects, its tableaux capturing the essence of each act for the theatre, while the cinema screening draws in on the intimacy of the epic small-scale drama that takes place in this environment.
Act I of Werther then is blazing summer with Christmas songs, a combination that deliberately throws one off balance a little. Edwards' sets likewise capture the simplicity of the little children's choir rehearsal and the domesticity of Charlotte's family arrangements. The hugely over-sized door and wall on the other hand all indicate a world outside of greater expanse, a world that is inhabited by and opened up by the arrival of Werther. It's an inviting prospect, yet one that is closed off by Charlotte being promised to the much more solid and dependable Albert.
Acknowledgement of the emotions opened up by Werther and the impossibility of submitting to them is reflected in the set for Act II. It's a vertiginous promontory with a vanishing point into infinity, showing nothing in the background but open blue skies that fill half the stage. The sky however has an oppressive quality with a faintly tempestuous autumnal instability brewing within it. There's nothing naturalistic about this landscape, which when combined with the punishing lighting creates an atmosphere of unbearable tension for the impossible situation. The heat is building and something is going to break.
Act III and Act IV's set designs might look traditional by comparison, but the dark interiors are just as evocative of the underlying mood and where the direction of the personal drama is taking us. Its sober period designs and lighting also serves as a contrast to what might otherwise come across as something overwrought. Overwrought only however if everything else has been played with a heavy hand leading up to it, and fortunately in this well-measured and dynamic production that never happens.
The attention to the detail and the character of Massenet's music helps determine the right approach and Antonio Pappano manages to find the correct nuance not just for each scene but for each individual moment. Despite the source being Goethe's famous drama, Massenet's Werther is thoroughly French in its character, but with a clear Wagnerian German influence in its sweeping Romanticism and in its through composition with leitmotifs. There's also something Italianate in the dark operatic tragedy and full-blown melodrama in the expression of the main character's sentiments.
Joyce DiDonato who cites those Italian passions in a brief interview segment shown during the live cinema broadcast, and between the American mezzo-soprano and Vittorio Grigòlo the Royal Opera House have a couple of very strong and passionate singers capable of reaching all those emotional peaks. Viewed close-up on the cinema screen both are occasionally little stagey in their mannerisms, but this is an intense opera with big gestures and it's not surprising that in a somewhat intentionally stylised production that it doesn't always achieve the kind of naturalistic realism we might like.
In terms of singing performances Grigòlo and DiDonato are both phenomenal as they chart the difficult course of the relationship between Werther and Charlotte. Grigòlo's Werther is almost bursting with passion by the time we get to the final two Acts, while DiDonato's Charlotte is clearly aghast at the recognition of where her actions and passions have led them. The characterisation is all there in the singing voices and they are both utterly compelling and impressive. There's a strong supporting cast here too, with engaging performances and similar attention being paid to character right down the line. It all contributes to a near complete mastery of everything that is in Massenet's music and everything that is great about it.
Links: Royal Opera House
Jules Massenet - Werther
English Touring Opera, 2015
Iain Farrington, Oliver Platt, Ed Ballard, Carolyn Dobbin, Lauren Zolezzi, Michael Druiett, Jeffrey Stewart, Simon Wallfisch
English Touring Opera, Buxton - 18 October 2015
Unlike many of Massenet's operas, Werther, the composer's ode to German Romanticism doesn't necessarily have to appear terribly old-fashioned. Which means of course that it doesn't have to be set in Goethe's period (the original story written in 1774) or around the time of Massenet's writing of the opera in 1887. There's a powerful universality to its theme of extreme passions that dominate the French operas in the English Touring Opera's Autumn 2015 programme, and accordingly, performing the work in English, director Oliver Platt sets this version in small-town America in the 1950s. Far from updating the work however, it still feels horribly dated and old-fashioned.
In fact, the production takes away considerably from the Romantic allure of the work, losing the period distance with which we can regard the over-heated emotions and declarations. The ETO's production has nothing to offer in its place, the small-town setting rather making it all look rather dull and domestic. Charlotte's father may get away with wearing baggy corduroys, a cardigan and smoke a pipe, but it doesn't really help that the others all dress in a similar 'square' manner. The ladies wear bright summer frocks, Arthur returns home in a GI uniform and transforms into Stanley Kowalski after his marriage to Charlotte. The weedy Werther meanwhile wears a suit and glasses looking like the local nerd. It's not a good look for a romantic-hero opera archetype, however overwrought, oversensitive and neurotic he might in reality be.
A little bit more of Tennessee Williams wouldn't have gone amiss in this setting actually. It's functional for the suppression of violent passions, but it lacks the kind of moodiness and threat of underlying violence that is needed to ramp up the melodrama for Werther. Actually, a better model for this Werther would be the garish Technicolor melodramas of Douglas Sirk, but that wouldn't have fitted with the pared down arrangement of the work for piano, violin, cello and clarinet. With the musicians up on the stage in the background, Iain Farrington conducting from the piano, the understated delicacy of the playing at least matched the tone of the setting and the characterisation here in Oliver Platt's direction, but really, Werther doesn't benefit from understatement.
It doesn't need overstatement either - as Richard Eyre's overblown production for the Met demonstrated - but it needs the grand Romantic sweeps of Werther's love theme that surge up in those moments when he is with Charlotte, and take on an additional poignancy in his memory of them that becomes almost unbearable. Understatement is fine elsewhere, as it contrasts with the idealisation and the morbid inclinations of Werther that take on a gloomy and despairing weight and meaning of their own when detached from the reality.
Unfortunately Ed Ballard didn't give us a moody Romantic hero too sensitive to live in this cruel world without Charlotte. With the use of an English translation moreover - awkward scansion and not really any attempt to Americanise it - there was more of an air of petulance about this Werther. "Dash it all, this is very inconvenient!", was more the attitude that came across, Werther annoyed and mildly put-out that his plans to spend the rest of his life with Charlotte have run into the obstacle of Arthur's return. I don't think that Werther suited a baritone either. Jonas Kaufmann can certainly give the role the body and fullness of tone that approaches a baritone, but transposed this way it lacked the richness of colour and expression needed here.
There was strong singing from Lauren Zolezzi as a bright Sophie and Simon Wallfisch as Albert. Carolyn Dobbin as Charlotte and Ed Ballard were also fine, but the casting and the direction didn't do them any favours. They weren't able to bring any real conviction to their characters whose motivations and conflicts are much more important to the work as a whole. Werther is a work that requires a greater dynamic than this, and Massenet provides a strong musical equivalent to the Romantic heroism of the unlikely phenomenon created by Goethe. The English Touring Opera's production wasn't able to deliver that in its chamber arrangement or in the stage direction, and the actions consequently felt very old-fashioned, staged and remote from modern sensibilities.
Jules Massenet - Werther
The Metropolitan Opera, New York - 2014
Alain Altinoglu, Richard Eyre, Jonas Kaufmann, Sophie Koch, David Bižić, Lisette Oropesa, Jonathan Summers, Philip Cokorinos, Tony Stevenson, Christopher Job, Maya Lahyani
The Met Live in HD - 15 March 2014
Much as I try - and I've listened to a lot of his work - Massenet is a composer I've never been able to connect with on a musical level. There are exceptions of course - and Werther is certainly one of them - particularly when the work in question is given a thoughtful stage presentation. Manon, for example, stands or falls based on whether the director is willing to draw the personalities out of the characters, and Don Quichotte can be a wonderful and tragic flight of adventure if it's directed by Laurent Pelly. Werther however, you can't really get it wrong. Surely. It's all there in the music and even the most basic illustration of Massenet's perfect setting can convey the full impact of Goethe's highly romantic work. Basic illustration is however something that you don't often get with Metropolitan Opera productions or Richard Eyre, and I'm not sure their over-elaboration of elements of this production really add anything to the work.
To be fair, Richard Eyre's production, while it does seem terribly old-fashioned and theatrical with fussy details, does have some modern touches that in some respect relates to Massenet's old-fashioned compositional style with its (I feel) uncomfortable relationship with Wagner-influenced modernism. This is particularly evident in the overture in which Eyre stages the death of Charlotte's mother as a prelude to the opera. This is undoubtedly a significant event and the music that accompanies it is similarly brooding with foreboding, with death and its impact on those left behind. In particular, it determines Charlotte's future security in a promised marriage to Albert, and that is what is going to be the great tragedy of Werther's love. This prelude then sets the tone well for what follows, but it's also an example of how literally everything will be laid out, filled in and made explicit on the stage.
While there are certainly broad sweeps in the music, Werther is, admittedly, not so easy to pin down to a consistent overall tone. Certainly there is a large fatalistic romanticism that hangs over everything, but Massenet's score also portrays various little colourful incidents - the children's Christmas carol singing at the height of summer, Charlotte's relationship with her brothers and sisters, the Bailiff's appearance and his visit to the inn with Johann and Schmidt, the ball and intimations of the beauty of nature - all of which have to fit into the overall tapestry. These are important since they represent the life that is gradually squeezed out of the picture by Werther's all-consuming dark despair. This, I would suggest, is however is something that the conductor needs to manage more than the stage director, and Alain Altinoglu responds well to the challenges presented by the varied tones of the work.
Unfortunately, Richard Eyre feels that it's his job not only to depict every colour of the musical score in the staging, but to fill in where he feels that Massenet and the libretto haven't supplied enough detail. In the opening prelude this is acceptable and it's impressively staged, with projections and scene changes that capture the passing of time, set mood and location, the machinery allowing the set to fan out into rolling hills that tilt the stage and skew the lives of the characters. Eyre's production however goes way beyond merely setting the tone. The action of Werther can be left semi-ambiguous and unstated, but Eyre has a very definite, literal view on Werther's stability and his descent into despair and takes care to emphasise them for the audience.
There are, for example, no doubts here that Albert knows all about Werther's letters to Charlotte and that he, and everyone else, knows exactly what Werther's intentions are when he asks to borrow Albert's pistols. In some respects, this can be justified as it adds to the fatalistic romanticism of Goethe's work, that there's only one way that this can end and that everyone has to submit to the natural sequence of events that tragically have been set in motion that will inevitably end in Werther's suicide. Charlotte undoubtedly knows it here too, and - in one choice that I thought worked well in this production - follows this fatalistic path to its inevitable conclusion where she also prepares to take her own life as the curtain falls. In the context of this production, this is a perfectly consistent and effective choice that plays out well.
It's not the choices that Richard Eyre makes necessarily however, as in how he makes everything overly explicit, leaving no room for ambiguity for the viewer to make their own mind up about Werther as a hopeless romantic or as a pathological case. Perhaps the most extreme example of this is in the overly graphic scene of Werther's suicide. In my experience, this is often (and best) left unseen as an off-stage event. Massenet's score and his fate leitmotifs are powerful enough for this to work more than effectively. Eyre not only shows the sequence of Werther's despair, but graphically depicts him shooting himself in one of the bloodiest scenes I've ever seen on the stage, shooting himself through the heart (of course), with blood splattering all over the walls behind the bed in his dingy room.
It certainly a highly charged scene and I would agree with Eyre (in an interview with Peter Gelb during the interval) that it (and the production as a whole) is in keeping with the contemporary references to Ibsen, Strindberg and Chekhov - both in terms of the subject and the period and in terms of darker undercurrents of the content - but there's a feeling that Act III tips over into more modern depictions of screen violence. Tellingly, Eyre compares Jonas Kaufmann's acting ability to Al Pacino, and I wouldn't disagree with him either (it's largely down to Kaufmann that this works as well as it does), but it would seem that like most dumbed-down cinema depictions, Eyre doesn't trust the viewer to be able to work out undercurrents and make connections for themselves, and needs to spell it all out for them.
With all this over-emphasis, there are times when you think that Jonas Kaufmann is also over-emoting, but in the case of a character like Werther there's probably no such thing. Although many certainly did in Goethe's time, Werther is not a figure that you can entirely relate to nor completely sympathise with from a modern sensibility. You can however recognise the depth of his feelings from Massenet's writing and from the soulful delivery that Kaufmann expresses so powerfully. It could be a little more restrained and guarded in expression, but in the context of this production, it's about right and Kaufmann's ability is as impressive as ever. And comparisons to Pacino are no hyperbole either - this is a committed, convincing dramatic performance.
If there are some concerns about the stage direction, there are however no doubts whatsoever about the quality of the singing or the suitability of the casting. I'm a great admirer of Sophie Koch, who is a versatile and committed performer of tremendous ability. She sometimes sings more from the heart than from the page, but I'll take that kind of emotional and dramatic involvement over note-perfect singing technique any day (I would put Anja Harteros in the same category). She knows the role and character of Charlotte well and her experience shows, working well with Kaufmann and often to spectacular effect. In the rather distinctive approach taken to characterisation here, Albert and Sophie also have significant roles and both David Bižić and Lisette Oropesa make a strong impression and sing well.
This is a typically solid Metropolitan Opera production, overly bold and literal perhaps when Werther would benefit from a more intimate and open approach, but Richard Eyre's production isn't without some distinctive touches. In the end however, it's the singing that carries it through.
