Class 6: In the Wrong Marriage

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6. In the Wrong Marriage. One aspect of reality in opera is the ability to depict the emotions of ordinary people is such a way that a skilled singing actress can make us believe in them as if they were indeed real. And Charlotte, the heroine of Goethe's best-selling 1784 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, is—on one level—indeed ordinary. Looking after her widowed father and younger siblings after her mother's death, she exemplifies the middle-class German values of Kinder, Kirche, Küche (children, church, and kitchen). Indeed, when she marries the man her mother picked out for her, she will be all set to make the perfect housewife. But then she meets the poet Werther (an alter ego for Goethe himself), whose spontaneous poetic passions send shock waves through her ordered world, and she cannot cope.

Jump forward by more than a century to the 1892 opera by Jules Massenet, who made a speciality of X-ray portrayals of the emotional turmoil of his characters, especially women. The heroines of his more spectacular operas such as Hérodiade, Thaïs, and even Manon are larger than life and obviously intense, but Werther is essentially a chamber work showing the lives of a handful of middle-class people in a provincial town. The composer had nothing to help him provide local color or melodramatic action. So the fact that he could venture so deeply into the inner life of a woman in such circumstances, especially in the remarkable Third Act, is both a miracle in itself and a challenge to every performer brave enough to attempt the role.

The Handout includes a brief synopsis. If you prefer a cute one-minute video, try this. The script, videos, and images will be posted immediately after class. rb.

Handout Class Script

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VIDEO LINKS

Right now, there is only one way to watch Werther complete, free of charge, and with English titles: a Czech film by Petr Weigl that is excellently sung but rather too elaborate and heavy to suit the opera's intimate scale. I give links to slightly before the start of each of the major sections we watched in class. I do the same for Benoît Jacquot's Paris stage production, from which all my excerpts were taken, but although the production is available on YouTube complete, it has no titles. However, you can buy used copies of the DVD on Amazon from upwards of $5, plus shipping.

My favorite production of the opera was the 2010 Live-in-HD broadcast from the Met; I showed a couple of glimpses of it in class, but could not obtain it complete. However, there are a good number of short clips from it on YouTube, most (though not all) with the same singers, and most (though not all) with titles. I especially recommend the clip of the complete Act IV, as it gives you a chance to see how the opera ends. The interview with the director, Sir Peter Eyre, is also interesting.

I thought I would look through a bunch of trailers to get a better idea of what is out there. These include the Paris and Met productions already mentioned, and an earlier version of the Paris production in London, interestingly discussed by the cast and conductor. The extraordinary set and staging of the production by Tatjana Gürbaca in Zürich made me go out and buy the DVD. I wrote a review with some pictures here.

Even more interesting was finding out more about the Christof Loy production at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées that I used for my title slide; it was also given at La Scala and in Barcelona. According to the reviews below, it kept the chamber quality by playing the action in a shallow room at the front of the stage, with double doors opening at the back to reveal the larger social context. What struck me most, though, was Loy's treatment of the secondary characters Sophie and Albert as active participants, and having them watch onstage as the action plays out. There is a complete video of this production in its Barcelona incarnation, unfortunately with a non-French cast and Spanish titles; my review of it is below. Sample the unusually violent Albert/Charlotte scene at the end of Act III to see how this works out. rb.

PETR WEIGL FILM
	Complete film	Complete film — Ball and duet — Act III
PRODUCTION SHOWN IN CLASS
	Opéra Bastille, Paris 2010	Complete production (as shown, but without titles) — Moonlight interlude and duet — Act III Buy DVD on Amazon (from $5 used)
METROPOLITAN OPERA 2010
	Met 2010	Act I duet, ending (Kaufmann, Koch, titles) Letter aria, end (Isabel Leonard, titles) Tears aria (Sophie Koch, no titles ) Werther's Act III aria (Kaufmann, titles ) Act III duet, climax (Grigolo, Leonard, titles) Act IV complete (Kaufmann, Koch, titles) Sir Richard Eyre on his production
OTHER PRODUCTIONS
	Various trailers	Bastille (see above) New York (see above) London (cast discuss the opera generally) Zürich (click for my review) Champs-Élysées) (Christof Loy, see below)
CHRISTOF LOY
	Champs-Élysées, La Scala, Liceu	Barcelona complete (Spanish titles) — Act I interlude and duet — Act III opening — end of Act III (a very striking scene!)
	Reviews	Loy's understated Werther (Paris) Werther is Back at La Scala (Milan) Inside/Outside (my review of the production in Barcelona)


IMAGES
The thumbnails below cover the slides shown in class, though there may be a few small discrepancies. Click the thumbnail to see a larger image. Click on the right or left of the larger picture to go forward or back, or outside it to close.