Customer Reviews

Massenet: Werther

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Von Stade is devastatingly good in this role. Her performance drips with pathos. Her act 3 performance is beyond words.

Let us take that as given and move on to the more controversial individuals in this performance.

I have never been a fan of Carrerras at all. Of the famous 3 tenors he is the least gifted and least powerful, ordinarily the least able to move you with the quality of his voice. In this recording, however, he is exquisite. He seems to possess all the naive innocence and stupendously futile passion that one would expect of this role. His exultation in act 3 at his first kiss, 'Ah, ce premier baiser, mon reve et mon envie...'is divine. If he does nothing else is his life, he has given me 'werther' and for that i must be grateful.

Over ten years or so this recording has steadily moved itself up in my personal list of favorites. There can be no other and I rage at the idea that it has been 'passed over'to some extent by the listening public. Gramaphon rates it highly and it is not difficult to undertsand why. This recording also made me a devout fan of Thomas Allen. His voice is gorgeous. The supporting cast is excellent, especially Robert Lloyd in the diminutive role of the baliff, and Colin Davis reads the score with impressive tenderness that doesn't sacrifice the thrill of tension that pervades the opera. Thomas Allen fetchig his guns to have delivered to Werther is spine tingling stuff.

I adore the world of this recording. It is wave upon wave of an emotion that I have long forgotten, and a bitter sweet reminder of love's futility. It is a wondeful opera...a french 'Tristan' in the way that Debussy's 'Pelleas et Melisande' is not. It intoxicates..but alas, I digress...

So far as recordings go, Werther is Massenet's most popular opera and by consensus his most inspired (once we get to Acts III and IV, at least). Since the revieweers below have rapturously praised this Colin Davis set, let me offer just a few comments on the competition. Werther has been sung by a wide range of singers; it can sound decidely verismo Italian as well as elegantly French; the conductor can pull the score toward refined lyricism or bursting passion.

I will list the various sets according to conductor and rorughly in chronological order:

Elie Cohen: Naxos offers a bargain version in surprisingly listenable sound of the first complete recording from 1931. Georges Thill imprinted the role of Werther in the minds of many listeners, and he is exemplary, the best French tenor before Alagna and twice as elegant as his successor. Ninon Vallin is a lyric soprano, one of the few to take on Charlotte other than a mezzo. Her Gallic style and even the type of vibrato she uses match Thill's perfeclty. Cohen moves the socre along with energy, and the latest remastering is clean and about as dynamic as one might hope for from the early electrical era.

Georges Pretre: We jump ahead to 1968, when this famous set with Victoria de los Angeles and Nicolai Gedda was made for EMI. De los Angeles joins Vallin as a soprano Charlotte, but with more weight to the voice, and gives us one of her most touching and beautiful portrayals. Gedda is in nearly ideal voice and sings with more passion than usual. Pretre, a highly variable conductor, leads with suppleness and sensitivity. A great recording in excellent, if close-up, sound.

Jose Lopze-Corbos: This dark horse among Werthers is a live performance from 1977 in Munich, distributed by Orfeo in good FM radio stereo. Conducting and singing are both white hot, pushing this performance squarely into verismo range, a la Cavalleria Rusticana. The two leads, Placido Domingo and Birgitte Fassbaender, couldn't be more passionate or musical. They have been plunked down in the middle of a German produciton, so nobody sings French well, least of all Domingo, with the exception of the scrupulous Fassbaender. This is a one-of-a-kind recording that some critics hail as all around the most satisfying on disc.

Colin Davis: Coming from Covent Garden, where von Stade and Carreras had just starred in the opera, this Werther is one of the high points of Davis's reign there, along iwth his Peter Grimes. Von Stade has won praisee as an exemplary Charlotte, and her beautiful high-lying mezzo was caught at its peak, before a characteristic fast beat became overly prominent. Carreras doesn't attempt French refinement; to him, Werther is first cousin to Cavaradossi, but he holds the sobs in check, and his voice in 1980 hadn't suffered too much from the onset of coarseness, strain and wobble. Davis gives a very committed reading from the pit.

Antonio Pappano: Another EMI production made in 1998, thirty years after the Pretre. Sonics are more dynamic than on the earlier set, but he microphones were set farther back, lessening dramatic impact quite a bit except at high volume. The stars are husband and wife, Angela Gheorghiu and Roberto Alagna. He sings in the same lyric style as Gedda, not pushing for heroics, and he has the distinciton of being a native French speaker, almost unheard of on recordings after Thill in 1931. I'd rank this one of Alagna's premiere roles. Gheorghiu strains a little with her bottom notes, as any soprano Charlotte would, but she is committed and dramatic, and the beauty of her tone carries her a long way. Pappano belongs among the first rank of Massenet conductors, although his attention to refined phrasing and detail makes the longueurs of the simpering music in Act 1 move too slowly. A minor quibble given the general excellence of this set.

Kent Nagano: An also-ran that is now out of print, this 1997 set on Erato deserves more notice. Nagano brought his Lyon Opera forces to itnernational prominence, and here they demonstrate winning Gallic style. The two principals are Jerry Hadley and Anne Sophie von Otter, both in top voice. She provides yet another in the long line of outstanding mezzo Charlottes, equalling von Stade in everything but the last ounce of intensity. Hadley sings awkward French and is somewhat subdued, but if you are looking for an elegant Werther with impeccable phrasing and gorgeous tone, Hadley may be the best on records since Gedda.

These are meant only as abbreviated comments, and I have passed over several modern stereo Werthers that I haven't heard. But this opera strikes me as Massenet's masterpiece, and it was a pleasure to rehear several very fine recordings.

After more than twenty years listening to this recording, I have to agree with the previous review that Von Stade and Carreras are the best in this role in recording. Lately, I tried to justify the Alagna Gheorghiu recording...they tried too hard and still cannot beat this best of all best Werther.

I bought this opera after having heard Carreras singing "Porquoi me reveiller" in a concert. I've never heard anyone sing this aria so "devastatingly well". Carreras sings the part of the "head-over-heels-in-love-Werther" and he sounds every bit the heartbroken young man who kills himself when he realizes that he can't have the woman he loves because she promised her mother on her death-bed to marry another. His final aria takes me to the verge of a complete breakdown. He asks Charlotte to be buried in Christian ground, but if that's refused (because of him killing himself) he will rest in a solitary dale where a certain woman will come to visit and shed a tear on his grave. The aria is sung in a voice that contains so much emotions and sweetness that you can't help but being choked up.

Frederica Von Stade, one of the top mezzos of our time sings the part of Charlotte. Von Stade has a beautiful voice and she gives a wonderful portrait of a woman torn between two men; the one she's in love with and the one she's married to..... She keeps Werther at a distance to not give in to him. Still he guesses that she loves him, but when she refuses to admit it, it actually drives him to committing suicide. Charlotte finds him before he dies and at last she tells him that she loves him. But it's too late. Werther dies and leaves both Charlotte and the listener completely devastated.

I just loved Robert Lloyd in the role as the bailiff (Charlotte's father). It's a pleasure listening to him singing and he really sounds like a loving father.

Isobel Buchanan who is Charlotte's sister Sophie is the one in this opera who maintains that one has to be happy. She has a lovely voice which sounds like that of a young woman and she gives a convincing performance throughout the entire opera.

Thomas Allen beautifully portrays Charlottes' husband Albert who goes from being a man that's understanding towards Werthers' love for his wife to a man who obviously has lost his patience with the infatuated young man. And I guess he also suspects that his wife reciprocates Werthers' feelings.

The opera is highly recommendable if you're prepared for the devastating experience it is. Not because of the singers; they are superb, but for the sake of the young love that's doomed right from the beginning. Keep lots of tissues at hand!

Now over thirty years old, this recording inspires in me the same affection and admiration as when I first heard it. Massenet is mildly scorned in some quarters; he had his fair share of flops and sometimes fell into a maudlin mode which smacks of trying too hard to please with easy sentimentality, but I am with Beecham regarding the beauties of his best operas (even if I would not go so far as to make frivolous, disparaging comparisons with Bach's Brandenburg Concertos...). "Manon", "Thais" and "Werther" are among my very favourite operatic entertainments for their sheer sumptuousness of sound, coherence as drama and distillation of French elegance. It helps to be a Francophile/phone but I honestly think anyone who loves the human voice in its most refined form would succumb to Carreras's opening recitative and aria, "Je ne sais si je veille"; it is the apotheosis of the Romantic sensibility in its adoration of Nature and the yearning plangency of its music. His French is pretty good and his voice at its very peak: warm, vibrant always suffused with a hint of tears - perfect for the arch-idealist Werther.

Von Stade is hardly less moving as Charlotte; she, too, has the ideal voice for the heroine with her rich, oboe sound and flickering vibrato. I am invariably moved to tears by the restrained passion of the duet for Werther and Charlotte at the end of Act 1. The supporting cast provides an embarras de richesses with such distinguished and elegant singers as Thomas Allen and Robert Lloyd; even the children are delightful. Colin Davis is not yet groaning obtrusively along with his performers and directs a sensitive and wholly idiomatic account of this grimly gorgeous tale; the ROH orchestra play wonderfully, caressing the score. The analogue sound is exemplary, as was so often the case from Philips in this era.

I am almost equally as attached to the recording in English of the similarly blessed ENO production with Janet Baker and John Brecknock as equally convincing doomed lovers which memory recalls as a visual, as well as aural, delight; I recommend any Massenet aficionado to own both.