Metropolitan Opera – Massenet’s Werther. February 25, 2014.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center – Balcony (Seat C119, $113.5.)

Story.  Werther falls in love with Charlotte, who is engaged to Albert.  Werther goes away for a while at Charlotte’s insistence.  He comes back during Christmas and for a brief moment the two declare their love for one another.  Charlotte rejects Werther, who then borrows a pistol from Albert and commits suicide, and dies in Charlotte’s arms while carols are being sung to celebrate the season.

Conductor – Alain Altinoglu.  Werther – Jonas Kaufmann, Charlotte – Sophie Koch, Albert – David Dizic, Sophie – Lisette Oropesa, The Bailiff – Jonathan Summers.

When Anne asked me what the story was, I told her “Werther falls in love, and commits suicide.”  That, actually, captures most of the plot.  The writeup at the beginning of this blog is a bit more detailed, and the synopsis in the Playbill contains a blow-by-blow account of the action on stage, but neither adds a lot to the plot.

There lies the huge issue.  I had stated many times the music makes or breaks an opera.  But I have not come across an opera with great music but a paper thin plot, until now.  There is much to like about the music.  And the sets are quite cleverly and tastefully done, morphing from one scene to the other smoothly at times.  Yet I can’t shake the thought that the story just drags on, and on, and on.  It could have ended after Act I, or Act II.  In Act IV Werther shoots himself, and the opera could have been put out of its misery right there (or soon afterwards.)  Yet it takes a long time for Werther to die, even after a bullet through the heart that splashes a lot of blood on the walls, and then Charlotte has to have this long lament afterwards.  The opera is based on a novel by Goethe, no less.

In the Playbill we read that Massenet was very popular in his day, but his style has fallen out of favor because of its sentimentality.  I am in no position to debate that, but I do want to note I enjoyed both Manon and Thais, and in neither instance came away with the thought that the story was incidental to the music.

How was the singing?  Uniformly good, but not as good as expected.  Kaufmann is of course the headliner.  I had heard him singing the roles of Parsifal, Siegmund, and Faust (the Gounod version), and wasn’t particularly impressed in any of those instances.  I was hoping singing a “romantic” role would highlight aspects of his singing that would change my opinion.  Not that he did poorly, but the performance was still not quite up to the expectation, or the hype.

Both leading ladies (Charlotte and her sister Sophie) are sung by mezzo-sopranos, a bit of a rarity.  I have always been impressed with Oropesa; one of those days she will get a lead role.  Sophie Koch as Charlotte did very well in her debut.  It is quite amazing how the Met finds all these artists from all over the world (e.g., only Oropesa is from the USA.)  One misgiving I have is that neither mezzo seems to have a “soft” in their volume dial.  In that regard Kaufmann has a wider dynamic range.

Back to my earlier sentiment: it was the music that carried the opera, making the relatively short work quite enjoyable.  I know the aria “Pourquoi me reveiller” quite well, but didn’t realize that it was so dark.  “Why awaken me, oh breath of spring?”  “They will find only mourning and suffering! Alas!”  Other than that, the music was new to me, although it was generally easy to like.  Charlotte has a couple of solos that deserve the applause she got.  The orchestration calls for a lot of lovely solo and ensemble playing.

One more thing.  Perhaps I have watched too many detective stories, but I still cringe when actors shoot or stab themselves or each other.  It is always a relief when the “victims” begin to move afterwards.

Anne is staying at Jersey City this week with Ellie, so I drove up and picked up takeout food from Chili’s and we ate at Ellie’s apartment before heading out to NYC.  ICON seems to have discontinued discount pricing, but we found off-street on 70^th.  After dropping Anne off at Jersey City, it was close to midnight when I got home.

The New York Times reviewer loved Kaufmann’s performance, sparing no superlatives in his review.  He also goes into a lot of detail about all aspects of the opera, providing details that may obscure but not hide the emptiness of the plot.  I am glad he doesn’t like the suicide scene either, even though it is for different reasons.