Opera Explained | Werther by Jules Massenet (Audio)

"An Introduction to...Jules Massenet - Werther" written by Thomson Smillie, narrated by David Timson.

While the image of the artist starving in a garret is a popular one with opera composers, few of them actually suffered the fate themselves. Mozart and Wagner occasionally did, but not Rossini, Massenet or Puccini, all of whom became very rich through the composition of their operas. This was true especially of Massenet, the dominant figure of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French opera. He wrote around twenty-five operas, of which Manon and Werther remain firmly in the repertory, and others like Thaïs and Hérodiade are on the fringes. He was a meticulous, businesslike and punctual composer who turned out one perfumed masterpiece after another to delight the international audiences of the belle époque. He had a sure sense of theatre and craftsmanship which combined with a gift for melody and orchestration to ensure his enduring success.

Werther is regarded by many as Massenet’s masterpiece. The source of the plot is a novel, usually translated as The Sorrows of Young Werther, by the great German Romantic poet Goethe. It involves the unrequited love of an ardent young man for the lovely Charlotte. She is pledged to marry another, and when she does so Werther, after much anguishing, commits suicide. So great was the impact of this novel on early nineteenth-century sensibilities that the work was banned by church authorities – suicide was seen as the ultimate blasphemy, showing a lack of faith in God’s purpose – yet fashionably depressed young men were known to have taken their lives in imitation of its hero. The attractions of Massenet’s work are not difficult to appreciate. The story is straightforward and deeply touching, and as it combines rustic simplicity – the home life of Charlotte, her sister Sophie and her father – with grand passion and internal anguish, it offers excellent opportunities for rich characterisation and melodic invention. In fusing affecting melody with vivid orchestration, Massenet excels.

Act III includes one scene and two arias, all of which are among the most treasured of operatic numbers. The Letter Scene is a pillar of the mezzo-soprano
repertoire and Charlotte’s aria ‘Va! Laisse couler mes larmes’ is among the most tender and beautiful creations in French opera. But it is the tenor aria ‘Pourquoi me réveiller’, with its wistfulness for the solace of death, that lives longest in the memory.

Of course the very qualities of the perfumed and the sensuous which make Massenet such a favourite with audiences have led occasionally to his being disparaged by sterner souls; but happily the opera Werther has attracted almost universal admiration, possibly because the literary underpinnings are so deep and the musical expression so obviously and sincerely felt as to disarm even the most cynical non-romantic. For the rest of us it is a work of irresistible melodic beauty, and one of the most enjoyable French operas from what is now seen as a golden age of music theatre.

Tracklist:
- Background
1. Introduction
2. Ballet in French opera
3. French opera in the 1800s
4. Other French opera composers

- Werther:
5. Goethe and the plot of Werther
6. Prelude and opening of Act I
7. Charlotte enters
8. Charlotte and Werther return from the ball
9. Act II, three months later
10. Albert confronts Werther
11. Charlotte discourages Werther
12. Act III: Prelude and ‘Letter Scene’
13. Sophie comes to cheer up Charlotte
14. Charlotte and Werther
15. Act IV, Werther’s apartment
16. ‘Tout est fini’

Performance:
Werther: Marcus Haddock
Charlotte: Béatrice Uria-Monzon
Albert: René Massis, baritone
Sophie: Jaël Azzaretti
Le Bailli (the magistrate): Jean-Philippe Marlière
Johann, friend of Le Bailli: Jean-Sébastien Bou
Schmidt, friend of Le Bailli: Jean Delescluse
Käthchen, a young girl: Mathilde Jacob
Brühlmann, a young man: David Roubaud
Les Enfants: The Maîtrise Boréale

Bernard Dewagtere, chorus master
Orchestre National de Lille-Région Nord/Pas-de-Calais
Jean-Claude Casadesus
Pierre-Michel Durand, assistant to Jean-Claude Casadesus