Victoria Karkacheva as Charlotte and Russell Thomas as Werther
Photo: Michael Cooper
Canadian Opera Company/Werther, composed by Jules Massenet, libretto by Edouard Blau, Paul Millet and Georges Hartmann, after The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Four Seasons Centre, closes May 23.
Werther is based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s enormously influential 1774 novel The Sorrows of Young Werther, written during the height of Germany’s Sturm und Drang movement, that emotionally volatile period that exalted passion, individual feeling, and emotional extremity. Goethe himself would later distance himself from the novel, becoming somewhat embarrassed by the excesses of youthful emotion it represented.
Jules Massenet, meanwhile, composed his opera more than a century later during France’s Belle Époque, another intensely Romantic artistic period, the opera premiering in 1892. One could therefore say that Werther received a double infusion of Romanticism: first from Goethe’s original source and then again from the lush emotionalism of late nineteenth-century French opera. This becomes important because the opera ultimately explores not merely romantic love, but Romanticism itself as both aesthetic ideal and emotional pathology.
The reason I am stressing the opera’s deeply Romantic origins is because, strangely enough, that is precisely what I found lacking in this production. In virtually every other respect, the production is close to ideal. For all its musical and visual accomplishments however, it somehow underplays the overwhelming emotional intoxication that lies at the heart of Werther itself.
Maestro Johannes Debus conducts magnificently, as always, and musically the production is extraordinarily accomplished. The singing is excellent, and the new sets and costumes are beautifully realized. So why, then, did I feel oddly untouched by a score that normally transports me completely?
The answer, I think, is that the production is simply too clinical, too antiseptic, too emotionally controlled. What is missing is the sense of Schwärmerei and Sehnsucht that lies at the heart of Romanticism itself — that overwhelming intoxication with feeling, longing, yearning, and emotional abandon that should consume the characters of Werther rather than leave them so carefully composed.
Simone Osborne as Sophie and Robert Pomakov as Le Bailli
Photo: Michael Cooper
The title role of Werther is notoriously difficult, largely because of its punishingly high tessitura, but American tenor Russell Thomas sings it superbly with a clarion brightness that filled the house and quite deservedly received a rousing ovation from the audience. Similarly impressive is his Charlotte, Russian singer Victoria Karkacheva who rather surprisingly identifies herself as a soprano despite possessing what is unmistakably a mezzo-soprano instrument and a repertoire that largely confirms it. Regardless of classification, however, she sings the role beautifully, her voice one of honeyed richness.
Both performers execute the emotional and physical demands of the opera with complete technical assurance. They move through all the required gestures of longing, despair, repression, and emotional conflict. Yet because of the strangely antiseptic atmosphere surrounding the entire production, even these fine performances can occasionally feel almost diagrammed rather than lived — as though the emotions are being carefully illustrated rather than dangerously experienced.
The remainder of the cast iincludes excellent Canadian singers. Soprano Simone Osborne makes a delightful Sophie, all brightness, warmth, and youthful optimism, her chirping happiness providing an important emotional counterweight to the opera’s gathering despair. As the Bailiff, bass Robert Pomakov brings both authority and humanity to the role, embodying a man comfortably settled into the satisfactions of bourgeois domestic life: civic respectability, fatherhood, convivial drinking, and the pleasures of family. Even the sadness of having lost his wife seems absorbed into the larger stability of his existence. The seven younger children, meanwhile, are suitably high-spirited and sing their Christmas music charmingly.
There is no true villain in Werther. Charlotte has married Albert (bass-baritone Gordon Bintner) the man she promised her dying mother she would, who is considerably older than she is. She initially seems perfectly content within the stability and security of that marriage, and it is only when Werther reappears that all the suppressed longing and emotional turbulence resurfaces.
Albert himself is not portrayed as cruel or tyrannical. On the contrary, he appears largely sympathetic, fully aware that Werther had loved Charlotte before her marriage. Yet the opera leaves hanging one troubling ambiguity. When Werther requests Albert’s pistols, Albert instructs Charlotte to hand them over to the messenger. Does he understand what Werther intends to do? Massenet never answers the question directly, but the possibility inevitably lingers.
As Albert, Bintner sings throughout with dignity, steadiness, and gravitas, embodying the opera’s world of order, restraint, and social responsibility that stands in such painful opposition to Werther’s emotional extremism.
Russell Thomas as Werther and Gordon Bintner as Albert
Photo: Michael Cooper
One thing I have noticed about almost every Massenet opera is his fondness for populating the stage with vividly drawn secondary figures who may have little to do with the central drama but who contribute enormously to the atmosphere and texture of the world surrounding it. Werther is no exception.
The Bailiff’s two drinking companions, Johann and Schmidt — here sung by bass Alain Coulombe and tenor Michael Colvin respectively — are given several wonderfully charming scenes together, including delightful duets filled with warmth, humour, gossip, tobacco, and genial intoxication. Massenet lavishes genuinely memorable music on these supposedly minor characters, and both performers make the most of it. Their scenes become some of the evening’s most musically colourful moments and provide an important contrast to the emotional torment consuming Werther himself.
Similarly appealing are the long-engaged young couple Käthchen and Brühlmann, sung by soprano Emma Pennell and baritone Ben Wallace. Their appearances may be brief, but Massenet gives them enough character and musical personality to make them notable. Throughout the opera, these secondary figures enrich the social fabric of the piece, creating a living community around the central tragedy rather than leaving the protagonists isolated within a purely symbolic Romantic landscape.
This brand-new co-production of Werther merges the forces of the Canadian Opera Company, Opéra de Montréal, and Vancouver Opera, and was assembled by a largely Montreal-based creative team under director Alain Gauthier. Olivier Landreville designed the sets, Leilah Dufour Forget created the costumes, and Toronto’s Mikael Kangas provided the lighting design.
Visually, the production is extremely effective. Dominating the stage is a broad backdrop featuring the church and surrounding gardens, with the Bailiff’s house positioned in front, but off to one side with an adjoining terrace. Within this larger environment the design progressively contracts inward through a series of walls within walls Charlotte’s domestic interior emerges within the larger set, and then, deeper still, Werther’s own increasingly claustrophobic room appears enclosed within it.
Hovering above everything is a massive tree branch. When the stage picture remains open and expansive, the tree complements the pastoral garden atmosphere, but as the playing spaces shrink and the drama grows more psychologically compressed — particularly in Charlotte’s married home and Werther’s isolated room — the tree begins to feel oppressive, almost as though nature itself were threatening to crush the characters beneath its weight.
Alain Coulombe as Johann and Michael Colvin as Schmidt
Photo: Michael Cooper
Wisely, the production remains firmly set in the late eighteenth century, Goethe’s own period. Updating the opera would feel profoundly wrong because Werther is inseparable from the emotional and philosophical climate of its original era. There is no self-conscious directorial auteurism here, no attempt to impose a contemporary conceptual overlay where it does not belong, as Gautier makes clear in his program notes,
The costumes are particularly intelligent in their use of colour. Charlotte begins in soft, virginal pinks, but as the opera progresses and marriage reshapes her emotional world, the palette deepens gradually into richer reds and burgundies. Werther undergoes a similar progression, eventually appearing in a dark burgundy cape that visually mirrors his emotional descent. Sophie, by contrast, moves from brown to bright green. showing youthful vitality, while Albert’s neutral beige tones reflect his stability, restraint, and emotional moderation. Though fully period in silhouette and detail, the costumes use colour with great psychological precision.
To sum up my feeling about this production of Werther, ultimately, what is missing is a willingness to surrender more completely to the sweeping emotional intoxication of the piece itself. Maestro Debus conducts with tremendous control, clarity, and refinement, but Werther may be one of those operas that benefits from a conductor willing to lean even further into its surging Romantic emotionalism and allow that emotional excess to permeate not only the orchestra, but the singers and the dramatic atmosphere as well.
Next time, perhaps, a French conductor?
The Death of Werther
Photo: Michael Cooper