It is not for nothing that the subject of “love without regard to loss” keeps becoming a trend in literature: the fact that the feelings of individuals as a radically lived out alternative to civil coexistence can sometimes go beyond forms of peaceful coexistence has a seductive power. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Sturm und Drang classic The Sorrows of Young Werther from 1774 has become world-famous as a partly autobiographical, partly based on the suicide of an acquaintance. Goethe himself was long troubled by Werther, with whom he had "healed" his unhappy love for the married Charlotte Buff. As late as 1824 he said: “They are nothing but incendiary rockets! – It makes me feel uncanny and I'm afraid to relive the pathological condition from which it arose. The Frenchman Jules Massenet went one step further in his interpretation of this trendsetter text for an entire European generation in 1892: With exuberantly emphatic music, he portrays Werther as an emotional terrorist, whose promise of a different life Charlotte goes dangerously far into the bargain. Director Felix Rothenhäusler and his team, together with conductor Marc Piollet, have created a musical and scenic space that throws Werther and Charlotte into an arena in which they go berserk and ask what kind of intensity experience we are looking for in the theatre. So far (fortunately!), the opera has not provoked a “Werther effect” – suicides that imitate those of a fictional character – although the state of emergency is its core business. Love, however, according to the thesis, will set fire to what is familiar in radical affirmation. Originally conceived for the autumn of last year, the Staatsoper brings this confrontation with the most radical of all subjectivisms to the stage of the Littmann Building at the end of the season. Look forward to the internationally sought-after tenor Arturo Chacón-Cruz in the leading role and a role debut from ensemble member Rachael Wilson as Charlotte!
