«  Werther !… Who could have foretold the place he would occupy in my heart today? Since he departed, despite myself, everything wearies me! And my soul is filled with him! These letters!… ah! I have read them over and over… So beautifully written, but also with such sadness! » ACTE 3, CHARLOTTE

LETTERS
SACRIFICE
STURM UND DRANG*

Libretto by Édouard Blau,
Paul Milliet et Georges Hartmann

In 18th-century Germany, Werther, a romantic young man, falls madly in love with Charlotte, the bailiff’s daughter while her siblings practice Christmas carols in the middle of summer. He is eager to become part of his charming family. A beautiful romance ensues, but Charlotte has promised her dying mother that she will marry Albert. And thus Werther’s inevitable journey towards suicide begins…

A VERY SAD STORY

Jules Massenet considered setting Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther to music for quite some time. The epistolary novel was a literary monument of the Sturm und Drang, the unbridled form of German Romanticism. He completed his Werther more than ten years after his first draft. However, the stab wound when the hero kills himself caused a refroidissement with the director of the Salle Favart, who felt it did not reflect Goethe’s book. This sad story, in the words of Léon Carvalho, was first performed in a German translation in Vienna, then in French in Geneva, before finally returning to Paris in 1893 following its unanimous triumph. The work is generally considered to be Massenet’s masterpiece.

After the success of Manon, whose tragedy moved the whole of Europe, the composer set another literary work to music, giving greater prominence to the female character. In this opera, Charlotte, whose sacrificial dimension is accentuated and sublimated, is equally important to Werther. The opera portrays characters who are torn between their aspiration to be happy and the implacable respect for social and family conventions, using all the resources of the orchestra to create a penetrating atmosphere. The famous Air des Lettres continues to be one of the highlights of French Romantic opera to this day with Massenet’s sense of melody and his music capturing our hearts more than words can express…

• LAST PERFORMED AT THE ORW
  APRIL 1999
• NEW PRODUCTION
  OPÉRA ROYAL DE WALLONIE-LIÈGE
• WITH THE SUPPORT OF THE TAX SHELTER OF THE FEDERAL BELGIAN GOVERMENT AND OF BEL ARTS FUND

* GERMAN POLITICAL, CULTURAL AND LITERARY MOVEMENT OF THE LATE 18TH CENTURY, FORERUNNER OF ROMANTICISM