When in 1774 the Sorrows of the Young Werther , a novel in letters by Johann Wolfgang Goethe, appeared in print, the audience fell ill with the title character of a loner poet, idealistically in love with a woman related to another man. Europe was mastered by the "Werther effect", a mechanism of suicidal imitation: young people fell in love unhappily and, following in the footsteps of the novel's protagonist, took their own lives with a sublime gesture. Early Romanticism found an exemplary expression of its maladjustment to the world and the subconscious desire for death.
More than a hundred years later, when people were blown out by romantic loves and the world of belle époque was enchanted by the technical progress of the French composer Jules Massenet, the only heir to the French opera tradition after Bizet's death, he was intrigued by the love triangle of Charlotte, Werther and his rival Albert. In this old story, he saw the current conflict between the truth of feelings and the pressure of bourgeois conventions.
Work on the libretto and music took him seven years (1880–1887), and the efforts to exhibit the work took another five. During this time, five other operas were premiered, including the famous Manon . Today there is no doubt that in the case of Werther we are dealing with a masterpiece. Its culminating moment is act III, a confrontation of the lovers' feelings when reading Osjan's poems, captured by the composer into a beautiful aria by Werther Pourquoi me réveiller . She catches act IV, in which the weight of the story shifts to Charlotte, with her wonderful mezzo-soprano part.
In the opera, unlike in the German original, she loves Werther, but chooses the duty towards her deceased mother, who gave her practical Albert as her husband. Werther, who believes in eternal love ( l'amour eternel ), wants to die. Charlotte orders him to leave the area for six months until Christmas. However, she cannot forget about him, she reads his letters, and when her beloved suddenly arrives, she cannot hide her love. However, she breaks free from him, and he decides to kill himself ( Charlotte sentenced me to death! ). Charlotte goes to town to stop her lover, but arrives too late - Werther is mortally wounded. He dies in her arms to the sound of a Christmas carol, and she gives him the kiss she had previously shaked up.Let your soul dissolve in my heart - these are the last words of their duo, which - what can I hide here - squeezes tears from my eyes.
In his famous 1996 staging of Werther , which triumphantly crossed the opera stages in Amsterdam, Rome, Geneva, Antwerp, Frankfurt, Barcelona (starring Piotr Beczała in the title role) and Prague, German director Willy Decker focuses on the psychological aspects of a love obsession and trapping your own mind. The wide planes saturated with intense colors of the set design, the hallmark of this director, are divided into two zones: the limited field of the characters' psyche and the plan of nature in which the rhythm of the seasons is reflected.
