Werther by Massenet, From (2025/2025), Directed by Jan Eßinger, Conductor Mino Marani, Theater Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Werther loves Charlotte. But on her mother's deathbed Charlotte promised her to marry her fiancé Albert. Living in her father’s house with her eight younger siblings, she has been taking care of them dutifully since her mother’s death. It’s a snowy Christmas Day in Wetzlar when Werther borrows a pistol from Albert to take the only way out he can see. Jules Massenet puts Goethe's epistolary novel on the big opera stage. His colourful and emotionally profound compositions do not just set to music one of the most tragic love stories in literary history but also the feeling of a generation striving for freedom as well as their clash with the existing world order.