Werther by Massenet, From (2025/2025), Directed by Herbert Föttinger, Conductor Anthony Bramall, Gärtnerplatztheater, Munich, Germany

The famous epistolary novel, “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, in which Goethe recorded his own experiences, triggered a wave of suicides across Europe following its publication in 1774. The text’s characteristic emotionality is whipped up to even greater intensity by Jules Massenet’s music. His "Werther” celebrated its world premiere in 1892. Herbert Föttinger stages the opera as a psychological intimate play about a nascent lust for life and the difficulty of breaking out of one’s familiar environment.