Organization

Singer

Tenor

Piotr Beczała

Werther

Mezzo-soprano

Anaïk Morel

Charlotte

Soprano

Mélissa Petit

Sophie

Baritone

Andrei Bondarenko

Albert

Bass

Cheyne Davidson

The bailiff

Martin Zysset

Schmidt

Yuriy Tsiple

Johann

Stanislav Vorobyov

Bruhlmann

Soyoung Lee

Kathchen

Conductor

Lorenzo Viotti

Stage director

Tatjana Gürbaca

Set designer

Klaus Grünberg

Costume designer

Silke Willrett

Lighting designer

Chorus master

Ernst Raffelsberger

Dramaturge

Claus Spahn

Juan Diego Flórez

Anna Stephany

Audun Iversen

Opernhaus Zürich

Italian

Zurich

Switzerland

Opernhaus

DIRECTOR
Jules MassenetTatjana GürbacaKlaus Grünberg
STARRING
Opera ZurichPhilharmonia ZürichJuan Diego FlórezAnna StéphanyMélissa PetitAudun IversenCheyne DavidsonMartin Zysset
Forbidden love, wrongdoings and anguish: the Opernhaus Zürich ventures into late 19th-century French romanticism with “Werther“ by French composer Jules Massenet. A loose adaptation of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s epistolary novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, the opera is conducted by Germany’s Cornelius Meister. It tells the story of the impossible union of poet Werther to Charlotte, a woman of duty already promised to a wealthy businessman. Goethe’s drama is echoed in Massenet’s score by emotionally wide-ranging vocal parts written on a grand scale.

Every detail of Massenet’s chef d’œuvre—a sort of Eugene Onegin “à la française”—is perfectly in place in Tatjana Gürbaca’s 2018 Werther: its naiveté (Act 1’s scenes of childhood), humor (Charlotte’s making fun of the elderly ladies she visits in Act 2), romanticism (settings of moonlight and stormy nights), and intense melancholy (Charlotte’s profound despair at Werther’s tomb). 

Taking cues from Massenet’s nuanced score, Gürbaca sets the opera’s action in a parlor resembling the interior of a small wooden box: a real-life cabinet of curiosities, with the bare minimum of props (a clock, a cupboard, shelves, a trunk) leaving the central area of the stage empty to be occasionally traversed by a moonbeam, the arriving light of dawn, or falling snowflakes… The space is filled by Juan Diego Flórez’s Werther, whose sunny voice and magnetic presence complement Anna Stéphany’s blossoming Charlotte, maturing from a timid girl into a woman of staggering humanity.

Photos