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| Massenet - Werther / Marcelo Alvarez, Elina Garanca, Adrian Erod, Ileana Tonca, Peter Jelosits, Philippe Jordan, Vienna Opera
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Release Date: 2005-11-15
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| Great updated interpretationI am possibly too late to add my thoughts about this production of Werther; but I have only just seen it. However, I cannot resist. It seems that there is general agreement about the stellar cast, so I will not go into that aspect.
Whenever there is a production wherein the director puts a different interpretation, there is usually a chorus of "Eurotrash" or at best complaints that the wishes of the composer and librettist are not being followed. But who really knows what these wishes might have been? When the operas were written, the originators were part of their times and wrote according to their cultural influence. But I believe that profound works of art deal with the human condition and leave sufficient ambiguity to allow for reinterpretation as society changes. Shakespeare's plays are a prime example of that. Gilbert and Sullivan operettas suffered and seemed anachronistic as long as the D'Oyly Carte company held the copyright and refused to allow updated interpretations.
Werther needed to be updated. Goethe saw him as a great romantic hero; and many impressionable young men followed the example. In our culture, and in this production as well as the Weigl one, he is certainly not. A very powerful force on a person is a death-bed promise. Charlotte promised her dying mother that she would marry Albert; and despite her "coup de foudre" for Werther, she believed that she had to go through with the marriage. Therein lies her tragedy. Werther certainly added to that. Not to put too fine a point on it, he is a stalker, a manipulative abuser. And all of his actions and music underline that. He would not accept that Charlotte was married to someone else and hence out of reach. Even after he went away he plied her with importunate self-centred letters culminating with suicidal threats. At the end he even wrote asking for the pistols instead of quietly doing away with himself. And the end of the opera also hints at the end of Charlotte as well. Had Albert not been such a cold callous person (his treatment of Charlotte at the end of Act III is abominable), Charlotte would have been able to hold Werther off -- or not, considering the number of murder/suicides perpetrated by stalkers.
To conclude: Great operas are not cast in stone. At the very least, why bother to go if all productions would be alike? But like all great works of art, great operas can be enhanced by different interpretations. Instead of carping, complaining, and dismissing with insulting phrases like "Eurotrash", perhaps it would be more profitable to ask what the director has in mind, and why. It would certainly make all theatre-going considerably more interesting.
Archie
Provocative and moving "Werther"Where "Werther" is concerned, there's not much competition in DVD format--only the heavily cut and lip-synched 1985 Petr Weigl film, which is still worth checking out for Brigitte Fassbaender's performance but not for much else. All the more reason to be grateful, then, that this 2005 production does not break the spell that seems to have guaranteed good fortune to virtually all the recorded versions of Massenet's most radical and adventuresome opera in both LP and CD formats (my personal favorites: von Stade and Carreras under Colin Davis, and Kasarova and Vargas under Jurowski). The musical values in this DVD set are quite high, with sensitive direction from the podium (Philippe Jordan) and a seamlessly stellar cast--there's not a weak link in the ensemble. Andrei Serban's staging and direction are perhaps not for all markets--this production moves the drama from Goethe's late eighteenth-century setting to the 1950's--but, for the life of me, if there were ever an opera that cried out for and could actually thrive on imaginative updating, it is surely "Werther." Vincent Patterson's recent updating of Massenet's signature opera, "Manon," which views the heroine's career through the lens of various Hollywood stars (Audrey Hebburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman), has received considerable acclaim (see the amazon.com reviews of the DVD); but Serban's vision engages the core elements of the drama in "Werther" far better than Patterson's treatment of "Manon." By comparison, Patterson's "Manon" seems merely clever. Serban's "Werther" is disturbing and profoundly moving, because it meticulously drives home the resemblance between the turmoil registered in the original setting and the soul-killing social and domestic proprieties of '50s-era middle-class culture. While it may be a cliche to think of the 1950s in those terms, this production makes them painfully fresh and real and gives edgy resonance to Massenet's psychologically asute music. The center of gravity does shift, however, but I think this is for the better. In Serban's production, the central character is clearly Charlotte, and the pivot of the drama turns on her (and, in Serban's staging, also Sophie's) unwillingness to acknowledge or act on the true nature of her desire until far too late. As a result, both Werther and Sophie also emerge as more complicated and far less sentimental figures than traditional stagings would allow: here Werther's instability and delusional fugues register powerfully, as does Sophie's painful and frustrated passage into adulthood. In a word, Serban's production does for "Werther" what Douglas Sirk did for filmic melodrama in the 1950s (think: "All That Heaven Allows," not to mention Todd Haynes' 2002 remake, "Far from Heaven"). Marcelo Alvarez captures the danger in Werther with powerful intensity; Elina Garanca's Charlotte is a major incarnation, especially riveting in the harrowing final act. If you love "Werther," you must see this.
Great singing, poor stagingWhy do directors have to detract from operas by forcing the viewer to watch their ego (which they call creativity)? The singing, acting, and orchestra are very good. So is the opera (one of Massenet.s most popular). But the scenery and the shift of time to the 1950s make it seem silly. As for the scenery, the giant tree that is the theme in all four acts is fine for act 1 (the garden) and act II (the town square, but is rather silly as the wall of the sitting room in act III and is totally ridiculous in Act IV where Werther's death bed in his bedroom is under this tree. Changing the time to the 1950s makes the plot unbeleavable. Girls of the 1950s simply didn't refused the man they loved to marry the man their late mother had wanted them to marry.
Great production, singing, acting!!!Like the previous reviewer, I had never seen any other production of Werther to spoil my enjoyment of this one. I thought it was wonderful! The music was powerful. The parts of Werther and Charlotte were sung beautifully and passionately by both Marcelo Alvarez and Elina Garanca. The acting was perfect. All the singers were good.
I was sort of surprised to see the 50s setting and costumes, but this is a timeless story, so...what does it matter? The staging with the gigantic tree was quite cleverly done, I thought. The changing colors of the leaves showed the passage of time. It was odd to have Charlotte's living space appear beneath the tree in Act III, but this is opera. By Act IV, the tree looked like a monstrous spider, and there lay Werther, bullet hole to the chest, dripping with blood. It took the entire act for him to die! With Albert lurking in the background and Charlotte mashing herself into Werther's bloody body...weird? Yes. Opera? Yes. I loved it!
yes it is a disturbing.And that's what director wanted to achieve I believe. I have never seen any other production of this opera, so I do not suffer any problems to take it along with the music. Singing on the leading parts is great and the rest are fairely good as well. It is disturbing, but I guess that's how it was supposed to be at the time it was written by Goette. That time was way more sencible and inocent, so the turns of director are justified.
As for the bed scene, the wound in this production is not to the head, but
a confused one to the stomach so there's no contradiction.
I had a great time watching this and I will do it again and again.
Sometimes the opera reviews are reminding me of Islamic fundamentalit's
writings. Not to mention, I am a former opera singer with 10 years of carrer. Buy it if you enjoy the fact that the opera is not something left in the past with the THREE TENORS, there's plenty of great singers in this world and Alvarez is definetly one of the best.
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