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Werther State Opera Vienna - Wien Mon 04.Jan 2027 replace me !Werther State Opera Vienna - Wien Thu 07.Jan 2027 replace me !Werther State Opera Vienna - Wien Sun 10.Jan 2027 replace me !Werther State Opera Vienna - Wien Wed 13.Jan 2027 replace me !When young Werther sees how lovingly Charlotte, the daughter of an official, treats her little siblings, he falls madly in love with her.
Charlotte also develops feelings for him, but has to reject him. She has promised her dying mother that she will marry her fiancé Albert. Werther cannot accept his fate and confesses his love for Charlotte again after her marriage to Albert. The growing affection between the two culminates in a tragic end: Werther takes his own life and Charlotte can only confess her love in the face of the dying man.
Andrei Serban's 2005 production carefully shifts the action to the 1950s. On Peter Pabst's stage, the action develops under, around and in the large tree in the center. The changing seasons visible in its crown clearly reflect the theme of the passing of time that is so important in Werther.As one of the most important works in the French Romantic repertoire, Werther is also characterized by a pluralism of form that Carl Dahlhaus described as eclectic in the best sense of the word: "Eclecticism in Massenet's case does not mean a renunciation of originality [...] but rather the freedom to meet the changing challenges of the subject matter." Even though Massenet wanted to follow on from the triumph of his Manon with Werther, he refused to follow the dictates of the director of the Paris Opéra-Comique, who demanded that he copy the successful opera in terms of form and style. Instead, he sought new creative paths and forms of expression: On the one hand, Massenet explored the work of Richard Wagner and, on the other, experimented with orchestration. Among other things, he added the saxophone as a soloist to the instrumentation, thus achieving proto-impressionistic sound colors.In his memoirs, Jules Massenet portrays the publisher and librettist Georges Hartmann as the driving force behind Werther . The two had attended the Parsifal performance in Bayreuth together in 1885, which was so important for Massenet, and had subsequently traveled to various German cities, including Wetzlar, the scene of the events that had inspired Goethe to write The Sorrows of Young Werther . There, Hartmann had also presented Massenet with a French translation of Goethe's epistolary novel. Hartmann went to great lengths for the project of Massenet's setting of the material, as the composer describes: "He spoke excellent German, he read Goethe in the original, he appreciated the German soul, and so he attached great importance to my finally tackling this work. When it was suggested to me one day that I write a lyrical opera to La vie de Bohème by Murger, he took the responsibility of rejecting this work without consulting me in the slightest."Order your tickets for the Vienna State Opera and book your tickets now at viennaticket.at.
(Source: wiener-staatsoper.at)
