Werther

Charlotte’s life runs in predetermined lanes. Following the death of her mother, she looks after the family and it is a foregone conclusion that she will marry the ambitious Albert. Suddenly the impulsive Werther appears – and with him, the possibility of a completely new life plan. Torn between her love for Werther and the expectations made of her, Charlotte makes a momentous decision, because Werther's excessive passion is so close to the edge of violence.

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.

WERTHER programme reading sample