This week’s post focuses on the French composer Jules Massenet and his opera Werther, a passionate yet gloomy tale that focuses on how the cocktail of love and responsibility, leaves a bitter after-taste.
Massenet was a dominant composer of French Opera in the late 19th Century, having written over 30 operas across a variety of styles, (intimate tragedy, verismo, opéra comique and grand opéra). From these, only Manon and Werther are performed regularly encouraging them to be performed all around the world. Despite Werther’s later success, it took Massenet five years to premiere this piece. Even though several of his opera’s successfully premiered at the Paris Opéra-Comique, the management took a distinct disliking to the proposed spectacle as they found the plot too depressing. It was then furthered delayed as Paris Opera-Comique’s theatre was victim to a destructive fire in 1887. When researching I was horrified to read in one archived newspaper article that this fire originated on stage during a performance of Ambroise Thomas’ Mignon as “one of the wings caught fire from a gas jet, and the entire stage was immediately enveloped in flames.”
This horrific incident contributed to Massenet premiering the first performance of Werther at Vienna Court opera in 1892. After receiving warm reviews, the opera was presented in Paris a year later.
SPOILER ALERT: The story at the heart of Werther is an adaptation from Goethe’s novella “The Sorrows of Young Werther”, which presents a hopeless love story which ends in the most tragic of ways: a man’s suicide with pistols provided by his beloved. Werther falls deeply in love with Charlotte, who cannot share in his admiration because she has promised her recently deceased mother that she would marry Albert. The role of Charlotte is popular among female singers (mezzo sopranos), not only because this character does not dramatically die on stage, but because the roles are reversed, and it is the man who dies for her.
On my recent album, Songs from Our Balcony, you can hear “Frère ! voyez ! Voyez le beau bouquet !”. An aria sung by Charlotte’s younger sister Sophie, who observes Werther’s troubled spirit and due to her youthful naivete does not truly understand his frustrated lovelorn state and encourages him to see the happiness that life has to offer.
French Text
Frère ! voyez ! Voyez le beau bouquet !
J’ai mis, pour le Pasteur, le jardin au pillage !
Et puis, l’on va danser !
Pour le premier menuet c’es sur vous que je compte …
Ah ! le sombre visage !
Mais aujourd’hui, monsieur Werther,
Tout le monde est joyeux !
Le bonheur est dans l’air !
Du gai soleil, pleine de flamme,
Dans l’azur resplendissant,
La pure clarté descend de nos fronts jusqu’à notre âme!
Tout le monde est joyeux !
Le bonheur est dans l’air !
Et l’oiseau qui monte aux cieux dans la brise qui soupire …
Est revenu pour nous dire que Dieu permet d’etre heureux !
Tout le monde est joyeux !
Le bonheur est dans l’air !
Tout le monde est joyeux !
Translation
Brother! Look! Look at the beautiful bouquet!
I have pillaged from the garden for the Pastor.
And afterwards, we are going dancing!
For the first minuet it is on you that I count …
Ah! The sombre face!
But today, Mr Werther,
All the world is joyous!
Happiness is in the air!
From the cheerful sun, full of flame,
In the brilliant azure,
the pure light descends from our forehead to our soul.
All the world is joyous!
Happiness is in the air!
And the bird which climbs into the sky
On the breeze which sighs,
Has come back to tell us
That God permits us to be happy!
All the world is joyous!
Happiness is in the air!
I would like to close tonight’s post by wishing my Grandad a Happy Birthday for tomorrow the 29th March. I have only seen him for a brief visit in his garden last summer when the restrictions were lifted and I can’t wait until the current lock-down is relaxed and I can go and visit him and my Nana.
