In his autobiography, Jules Massenet describes a journey through Germany that he made with his publisher Georges Hartmann in 1886. When they reached Wetzlar, the setting of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther, Hartmann presented the composer with a yellowed copy of this novel, and Massenet ‘could not stop reading those burning letters full of the most intense passion’.
This account of how the opera Werther came about is romanticized – in fact, Massenet had begun work on it the previous year, 1885 – though it also neatly echoes the unreal idyll in which Werther first encounters Charlotte, the eldest daughter of a local official, Le Bailli. Despite it being only July, Le Bailli is busy rehearsing a Christmas carol with his children – for whom Charlotte has assumed the role of her deceased mother. Charlotte and Werther attend a ball, after which he effusively confesses his feelings: he’d gladly give up his life if it meant he could be with her. But when he learns that she is engaged to Albert, Werther storms off. He doesn’t return to Wetzlar until after the couple’s wedding, and continues to hope that he and Charlotte might remain friends. But his love has become an obsession to which he repeatedly succumbs, and when Charlotte reads his passionate letters, she realizes that she, too, has feelings for him. On Christmas Day, Werther asks Albert for his pistols. Charlotte rushes to him. But it is too late, and Werther dies in her arms.
In his operatic version of Goethe’s novel, Massenet subtly illuminates the psychology of the convoluted relationships that emerge between Werther, Charlotte and Albert. He is especially successful in depicting the sharp contrasts between the plot’s tragic nature and its idyllic setting. The hero’s suicide was the main reason that the premiere could not be staged in Paris. In the end, it was the Vienna Court Opera that first accepted Werther in 1892. It enjoyed a brilliant premiere and remains one of the most successful operas in the French repertory.
David Treffinger
Translation: Chris Walton
