The bleak story is by Goethe (apparently autobiographical even to the name Charlotte, though the suicide was of a friend also hopelessly in love). As Peter McCallum put it in the SMH, 'It concerns a recurring trope of the Romantic era, the incompatibility of free love and rigid social structures leading to suicide, all overseen by a God who, Massenet hopes, will be more forgiving than the one he was brought up on. Comparable 19th-century stories, such as Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina and Flaubert’s Madame Bovary, explore the no-win situation for women. Goethe’s earlier novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, however, puts the emphasis on the male protagonist and, in Massenet’s lyrically melodious operatic retelling, the hero’s actions often seem self-obsessed, relying on the seduction of the music to constrain one from shouting out "stop your pitiful whingeing'.
Jules Massenet (1842-1912)
And who was Massenet anyway, since we're devoting a term to him? Arch-Romantic with love-and-death operas (Manon, Werther, Thais), yet not above writing enduring comedies (Cendrillon and the tragi-comedy Don Quichotte). Regarded as a "leading French opera composer, whose music is admired for its lyricism, sensuality, occasional sentimentality, and theatrical aptness", (Britannica) he wrote 30 or more operas - all, as Britannica puts it, "characterized by a graceful, thoroughly French melodic style... reflecting the succession of contemporary operatic fashions." And have you heard of anything else from him? Most of his working life was in in the Paris Conservatoire as professor then director.
Over four operas, this term, we can wonder, with NPR's reviewer, "How could the most successful French opera composer of his generation fall so far out of fashion?" He lived across the turn of the century (1842-1912), but as the ROH site comments, "Massenet’s innate lyric gift and his ability to evoke time, place, mood and character through music made him the archetypal composer of late 19th-century French opera." Rodney Milnes wrote in the New Grove Dictionary of Opera, "It would be absurd to claim that he was anything more than a second-rate composer; he nevertheless deserves to be seen, like Richard Strauss, at least as a first-class second-rate one." From his death till mid-20th century, he was somewhat neglected, but has been strongly rehabilitated since. "Although critics do not rank him among the handful of outstanding operatic geniuses such as Mozart, Verdi and Wagner, his operas are now widely accepted as well-crafted and intelligent products of the Belle Époque." - that extraordinary flowering of French culture and science. Read the Wikipedia article about Massenet, his life, times and music.
The extensive Wikipedia article "Paris in the Belle Époque" begins "Paris in the Belle Époque was a period in the history of the city between the years 1871 to 1914, from the beginning of the Third French Republic until the First World War. It saw the construction of the Eiffel Tower, the Paris Métro, the completion of the Paris Opera, and the beginning of the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur on Montmartre. ... Paris was the scene of the first public projection of a motion picture, and the birthplace of the Ballets Russes, Impressionism and Modern Art. The expression Belle Époque ("beautiful era") came into use after the First World War; it was a nostalgic term for what seemed a simpler time of optimism, elegance and progress." Massenet was a contemporary of Bizet, Saint-Saens and Ravel - a group who made great changes to French and indeed to European music. Romanticism was moved aside for impressionism and the development of modern musical styles.
Manon premiered in 1884, then eight years of mixed successes later, he produced Werther. (1892). It had three librettists, who painted a picture of two virtuous lovers (Werther and Charlotte) destroyed by censorious society personified in Albert, her betrothed and later her husband. There is a continuous theme of tears through the opera, not the melodramatic tears of an aria of grief but the deeper sad pervasive tears of inevitable sacrifice and doom. Listen for the tears in the libretto, hear them woven into the music.
We're going to look at two productions - "compare and contrast" as teachers always say. Which might make it a little harder to follow the action, so here's a good synopsis; and as always, Wikipedia provides a history and description of the opera. Our comparison offers two outstanding tenors, Jonas Kaufmann and Marcelo Alvarez in the title role, and two very different productions - one in a traditional setting, one daringly modern.
The Vienna production, 2005
Wiener Staatsoper under Philippe Jourdain. The hapless suitor Werther is the Argentinian tenor Marcelo Alvarez, his beloved Charlotte is the Latvian mezzo-soprano Elīna Garanča (a wonderful Carmen at the Met with Teddy Tahu Rhodes). Her husband Albert is the baritone Adrian Erod and her younger sister Sophie is Ileana Tonca. This quite famous production, set in the socially constricting 1950s, was from the Rumanian director Andrei Servan. Read the Classics Today review of this DVD.
The Paris production, 2010.
This production by Benoit Jacquot has Jonas Kaufmann as Werther, Sophie Koch as Charlotte, Ludovic Tézier as Albert and Anne-Catherine Gillet as Sophie. Michel Plasson conducts the Orchestra of the Paris Opera. The production was originally staged at Covent Garden in 2004; our DVD was filmed at the Opéra Bastille. Here's Classics Today's review of the DVD, comparing it to our Vienna DVD. Tommasini in the NY Times has a review of Koch and Kaufmann in a different, later production at the Met.