Encountering Massenet at the BPL

When BLO hosted its "Opera Night at the Boston Public Library" for Massenet's Werther on February 25, the last thing we expected to encounter was a living piece of history! One of our dedicated BLO supporters attended with a family treasure: a copy of Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, in French, inscribed by Massenet himself.

The great Sibyl Sanderson was Massenet's favorite soprano; she premiered several of his leading roles, including Esclarmonde, and was a renowned singer of Massenet's Manon. The Sibyl Sanderson Story: Requiem for a Diva, by Jack Winsor Hansen, recounts her success and tragically short life. Her great-niece, Margaret A., now lives in Boston and brought the heirloom to share with the BLO conductor and cast members at the BPL. The book was given to Sibyl Sanderson's mother, (Madame Sanderson) by Massenet himself after the premiere of Werther in Paris.

Margaret was delighted to share this family history with BLO, and we were thrilled to see the work come to life, on and off the stage!

Margaret A. showing conductor, David Angus, her family copy of The Sorrows of Young Werther.

Sandra Piques Eddy, singing the role of Charlotte, explores the book, inscribed by Massenet himself.

Massenet's inscription to Madame Sanderson.

All photos by Eric Antoniou for Boston Lyric Opera.

Werther Post-Show Discussion Questions

Sandra Piques Eddy and Alex Richardson in Werther.
Photo: T. Charles Erickson

Did you see BLO's production of Werther? Don't let the music just fade away! Consider these thought-provoking discussion questions with the friends or loved ones who attended the opera with you. After all, art is meant to be shared.


1.    Consider the production concept, directorial approach, and design elements of the opera. In what ways did these enhance, or detract from, your overall experience?

2.    How does Werther’s obsession and emotional state color his memories of the characters and events leading up to his suicide? How does the production reflect this?

3.    Charlotte is often described by other characters as good, angelic, pure. Do her actions throughout the opera justify this assessment? Why or why not?

4.    Why does Werther feel that suicide is his only option?

5.    How does Massenet’s music throughout the opera enhance the emotional content of the drama? Which moments stood out in particular, and why?

6.    Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther based on his own romantic experiences and those of people that he knew—including a young man who had killed himself after being rejected by a married woman. What are the ethics of this type of appropriation? Does the story glamorize suicide? Does the opera itself?

7.    Why would Massenet choose to juxtapose the children singing “Noel” as Werther dies in the final scene? Was it effective for you, and why or why not?

8.    Read the blog post regarding the added vocal lines in this production, written by David Angus, BLO Music Director and Conductor of Werther. Did you notice this moment in the opera? How did it enhance the final scene between Werther and Charlotte—or is the drama better served by leaving it out? Why?

BLO's Werther Breaks New Musical Ground!

Photo by Eric Antoniou

David Angus, conductor of Werther and Music Director of BLO, steps in this week to announce exciting news about the upcoming BLO production!

Dear readers,

You may not know that the job of the conductor begins months before rehearsals do—the conductor must sort through any inconsistencies in printed scores, or revisions that the composer made, and decide exactly which version will be performed so that scores can be compiled and all of the singers and orchestra musicians know precisely what to prepare.

Whilst preparing the Werther score several months ago, I discovered that the original handwritten manuscript orchestral score, from Massenet's own pen, was recently made available (within the last few years) online. I referred to it many times, and we have continued to do so throughout the rehearsals. I suddenly realised that, at the emotional and musical climax of the whole work, when the lovers finally kiss (shortly before Werther dies), there were mysterious extra vocal lines for the two lovers written in the manuscript. Instead of a kiss that lasted for over a minute, they were actually joining in with the ecstatic orchestra, firstly in a glorious, full unison at the tops of their voices, and then breaking apart and weaving around each other’s music in sensuous counterpoint. These vocal lines have never been included in printed, published versions of the score and I had not encountered them before—what would they sound like in performance?

The first of several pages in the manuscript score with the added vocal lines for Charlotte and Werther (emphasis added).

When we reached that music in the rehearsal process, I mentioned the extra vocal lines and suggested that we try them out.  Everyone got very excited by the power and beauty of the new music. The added section is not long, but it is exceptional, both because it comes at the absolute climax of the opera and because it is almost the only time that people actually sing together in this opera, rather than alternating in dialogue. This music symbolises the coming together of the lovers, and the weaving together of the two lines mirrors their physical interaction! The orchestral music at this point was already wonderful, but adding the two voices on top takes it to another whole level.

Adding to the excitement is the fact that we think that these added vocal lines might never have been performed, either at the time of the first performances, or since. To try to confirm this, we consulted with Professor Hugh MacDonald (a world authority on, and biographer of, Massenet) and Dr. Lesley Wright, the editor of the soon-to-be-published Bärenreiter critical edition of Werther. These two authorities know nothing of any performances that include the added vocal lines. In fact, in Massenet's time, the vocal score was completed before the full orchestral manuscript had even been started, meaning that the singers probably learned the music without these lines. All the published versions of the libretto and any translations that we can find fail to include the extra text for this new music. There is simply no trace of it, apart from the one original manuscript, written in Massenet’s own hand, and apparently added at the exact same time that he was working out all the orchestration. Who knows what inspiration took him and made him add these words and this music for the singers, or why it never made it into any of the later printed scores—vocal or orchestral. Our accomplished rehearsal coach/accompanist, Brett Hodgdon, has continued this research while rehearsing full-time, and has worked out the chronology of the scores and the compositional process, but he too can find no trace of these bars. Even if Massenet himself eventually decided not to include these lines, they still represent his first inspiration when preparing this part of the score, and I believe it was an error of judgement to remove them!

We are very excited to be able to include this music in the upcoming BLO production because it is truly wonderful and very powerful, and because, if our research thus far proves correct and these vocal lines have never before been performed, this is a significant world first. BLO is proud to continue pushing the boundaries of opera and blazing new ground, and we can't wait to share this stunning music—and all of Werther—with you.

Wait till you hear it, and you will understand!

David Angus
BLO Music Director
Conductor, Werther

Massenet—Beyond Werther

by John Conklin, BLO Artistic Advisor

BLO is deeply immersed in getting our production of Massenet's luscious and moving opera onto the stage (it opens March 11). Werther is certainly his most well-known piece (or would that be Manon?) but even it, acclaimed as his masterpiece, is not as commonly performed as would seem its due based on its charm, melodic richness, and depth of drama. And then there is the "rest" of Massenet...

Massenet wrote more than 30 operas (or 44...or 36...). Authorities differ on the exact number because some of his early works have been lost, still others were left incomplete, and some were substantially recomposed after their premieres.

He worked with a large number of different librettists and drew inspiration from such disparate authors as Goethe, Rabelais, Anatole France, Cervantes, Abbé Prevost, Flaubert, and Corneille.

The 1954 edition of The Grove Dictionary of Opera said, "to have heard Manon is to have heard all of [Massenet]." In 1994, the music critic Andrew Porter called this view preposterous. He countered, "Who knows Manon, Werther, and Don Quichotte knows the best of Massenet, but not his range from heroic romance to steamy verismo."

Three quotes from the 1993 Viking Opera Guide:

• "It would be absurd to claim that he was anything more than a second-rate composer; he nevertheless deserves to be seen, like Richard Strauss, at least as a first-class second-rate one."

• "Yet whatever the stature of his works, he was the most successful composer of opera in France, if not in Europe, in the quarter century between the death of Bizet and the premiere of Pelléas [et Mélisande]. His technical mastery and his craftsmanship are undeniable. He was also a complete man of the theater, assiduously attending to every detail of the staging of his works: scenery, costumes and lighting as well as orchestra—and their revivals throughout Europe. In this respect, he was as much of a 'producer' as Wagner."

• "Now that even serious musicians recognize that some quite important things have been said in the Broadway commercial theater, they might be prodded into recognizing the same about the similarly commercial French operatic institutions of the 19th century. Gershwin, Weill and Rodgers at their best do more than just 'reflect' the anxieties and preoccupations of their audience: they tease and provoke them from a consciously humanistic and moralistic standpoint. So did Massenet."

According to an Operabase analysis, productions around the world in 2012-13 show Massenet as the 20th most popular of all opera composers. His most often performed work: Werther (63 productions in all countries), followed by Manon (47), Don Quichotte (22), Thais (21), then Cendrillon (17).

Here are some succulent items from that vast sea of  Massenet works (he called them a wide variety of terms, including: opéra comique, comédie chantée, comédie-lyrique, comédie-héroïque, conte de fées, drame passionnel, haulte farce musicale, opéra légendaire, opera romanesque and opéra tragique):

Manon
Massenet is rightly famous for this powerful evocation of a sensuous and erotic atmosphere, coupled with an ultra-French coolness and elegance. Here, in another view, Alagna and Netrebko go at it with perhaps a little more eroticism and a little less coolness.


Cendrillon 
Massenet's version of the Cinderella story, a charming opera and, in this performance by Joyce DiDonato, deeply felt.


Le Cid
Massenet in an heroic, epic, and tragic mode; here, with Maria Callas conveying those emotions in their purest and most intense expressio.


Thaïs
This opera includes perhaps his most famous melody—the "Meditation"—which expresses the courtesan Thaïs' awakening consciousness...here beautifully etched by Anne-Sophie Mutter.


Hérodiade
Salome's declaration of love to John the Baptist—sung here by Sonya Yoncheva (recently a sensation at the Metropolitan Opera in her debut there).


Don Quichotte 
One of Massenet's last operas and one of his most famous characterizations. Here is the incomparable José van Dam in Quichotte's death scene.

The Power of the Letter: Werther

An image of Werther's letters
from a BLO promotional video

For hundreds of years, the primary mode of communication between people separated by distance was letters. Correspondence was an art and a pastime, a way to articulate emotions, deliver information, and even philosophize or theorize on the great questions of the day. The collected letters of great writers, thinkers, artists, and statesmen provide clues and insight to their thought processes and inner lives that are invaluable to researchers and readers alike.

Beyond real-world correspondence, letters have also become part of art in an integral way. Literature, theater, and opera are full of examples of crucial letters that go astray, are mis-delivered, arrive too late (or too early), and therefore provide critical dramatic moments. The prevalence of letters also gave rise to the form of the epistolary novel, in which the central story is told through documents (usually letters), rather than through a traditional first- or third-person narrative. Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther is a prime example of the epistolary novel, and even helped give the genre its popularity.

How else can letters bring a story to life? Here are a few examples:

Kiera Knightley in the 2005 film.

Pride and Prejudice
Probably the most beloved of Jane Austen’s novels, Pride and Prejudice in many ways revolves around the information disclosed through letters throughout the novel. Two of the letters especially tend to get hearts beating faster as the romance between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth clicks into place. First, Mr. Darcy’s long letter to Elizabeth after she refuses his offer of marriage explains his actions and causes Elizabeth to doubt her initial impression of him as cold-hearted and aloof. Later in the novel, Elizabeth reads from her aunt that Mr. Darcy arranged for her silly youngest sister to marry the roguish Mr. Wickham and her heart races—because she knows it is evidence of his feelings for her. Will they find their way to one another?!

Glenn Close, John Malkovich
and Michelle Pfeiffer for the 1988 film, Dangerous Liaisons

Les Liaisons Dangereuses
Another famous epistolary novel, written by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses tells the story of the deceitful and cruel Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte de Valmont through a series of letters by various characters written to one another. The book, published in 1782 amidst the decadence of the French aristocracy, caused a scandal at its depictions of amoral characters and their romantic games. It has been adapted for stage, opera, film, television, ballet, and more!

Macbeth
There are many examples of crucial letters (and messengers) in Shakespeare’s plays, but perhaps none sets off so dramatic a chain of events than Macbeth’s letter to Lady Macbeth near the beginning of the play. The scene opens with Lady Macbeth reading Macbeth’s tale of encountering the three witches and their strange prophecy that Macbeth will be Thane of Cawdor and then King. Lady Macbeth, in a monologue for the ages (that also coined the phrase “the milk of human kindness”), immediately knows what to do: kill the king while he sleeps and seize the crown.



Eugene Onegin
In both the original Pushkin verse novel and the Tchaikovsky opera, Tatiana’s letter scene is a masterpiece of emotion. Tatiana is a young, impressionable girl who has fallen in love with the dashing and cynical Eugene Onegin. Despite the mores of the time and the difference in their social status, Tatiana takes a chance and bares her soul to Onegin through a letter, confessing her love. Onegin, though flattered, does not reciprocate—a decision that comes back to haunt him later.



Hamilton
How are composers and writers using letters today in theater? Look no further than the hottest ticket currently on Broadway, Lin-Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton. The story of founding father Alexander Hamilton told through the modern genres of hip-hop and R&B, with strong influences of the Broadway musical (all with a multi-racial, diverse cast), letters play another crucial role throughout in voicing the characters’ inner feelings, and in advancing the plot. Alexander woos his future wife, Eliza, through a series of love letters; later, his witty, flirtatious correspondence (and a crucially misplaced comma) makes another woman who loves him wonder about his true heart. Letters also provide major dramatic turns in the story; when Alexander has an affair, he is blackmailed via letter by the woman’s husband and his own wife retaliates by burning all of her saved letters. And finally, Alexander and his nemesis, Aaron Burr, exchange a heated series of letters that leads to their fateful duel. 

Get to Know Massenet’s Werther

Background information on the opera by John Conklin, BLO Artistic Advisor

Poster for the first French production of Werther.
By Grasset.

PREMIERE
 Somewhat oddly for this very French opera, the premiere (in German) was at the Vienna Hofoper in 1892. The score had been finished in 1887 but was turned down by Léon Carvalho, director the Opéra-Comique, as “too gloomy” for his audience. Massenet put it aside and continued work on Esclarmonde. After the great success of Manon in Vienna, the opera management there asked for a new Massenet work, and so Werther’s premiere was set in Vienna. The first French production, finally given at the Opéra-Comique in Paris a year later with limited success (still “too gloomy”?), was withdrawn from the repertory, although the following year saw performances in New York (Metropolitan Opera), Chicago, New Orleans, Milan, throughout the French provinces, and a single performance at Covent Garden. In 1903, Albert Carré revived the piece at the Opéra-Comique with great success—it has been performed in Paris alone over 1,300 times and, after Manon, is Massenet’s most popular work worldwide.

LIBRETTO
Written by Édouard Blau, Paul Millet, and Georges Hartmann (Massenet’s publisher), based on Goethe’s 1774 novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther. Blau also provided libretti for Esclarmonde and Le Cid for Massenet.

SOURCE
Massenet, in his “ever unreliable” memoir, recalls how on a visit to Bayreuth in 1886 for Parsifal, his publisher, Hartmann, gave him a copy of Goethe’s novel when they stopped on their return journey at Wetzlar (the small, German town where the encounter between Goethe and the “real” Charlotte took place). The composer describes starting to read it in a noisy, smoke-filled beer hall and the immediate appeal of its passionate love story. Goethe’s novel is epistolary in form (a series of letters, as is another great 18th-century novel of romantic obsession and destruction, Les Liaisons dangereuses, written eight years after Werther) and tells of a infatuation that ends in suicide. Goethe admitted he “shot his hero to save himself,” a reference to Goethe’s own near-suicidal obsession with a young woman and the therapeutic value of writing out and thus transforming his real agony in a fictional form.

The outfit described by Goethe for Werther became
a fashion sensation among young men during "Werther Fever."

Written when he was twenty-four years old, Goethe initially published the novel anonymously and distanced himself from it in his later years, although it was his first major success and turned him into a celebrated author overnight. Napoleon considered it one of the greatest works of European literature and carried a copy on his campaigns. One anecdote has Napoleon and Goethe himself discussing a passage from the novel (a conversation at which one would certainly like to have been present). The novel started the phenomenon known as “Werther Fever,” which caused young men to dress in the clothing style described by Goethe (yellow pants, buff waistcoat, and blue jacket…the outfit Werther was wearing when he shot himself ), and reputedly led to the first known examples of copycat suicide.

A SLICE OF CULTURAL HISTORY
Around the time of Werther’s premiere (February 1892):
-    Mrs. Warren’s Profession (Shaw) was written (1893)
-    Lady Windermere’s Fan (Wilde) premiered (February 1892)
-    Pelléas and Mélisande (Maeterlink) premiered (1893; the opera by Debussy premiered in 1902)
-    The Master Builder (Ibsen) was published (December 1892)
-    I Pagliacci (Leoncavallo) premiered (May 1892)
-    The Nutcracker (Tchaikovsky) premiered (December 1892)
-    Pearl S. Buck, writer, and Marshal Josip Broz Tito, Yugoslav revolutionary and statesman, were born (1892)
-    Poets Walt Whitman and Lord Alfred Tennyson died (1892)

Werther Recommendations

Recommendations for further reading, watching, and exploring from John Conklin, BLO Artistic Advisor

An illustration from The Sorrows of Young Werther.

The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Translated with an introduction and notes by David Constantine
Oxford University Press, 2012 (paperback)
A fine translation that “captures the novel’s lyric clarity” and the passionate introspection and desperate intensity of feeling that made it such a powerful exemplar of Romantic passion in its time, served as a inspiration for Massenet’s outpouring of devastating emotion, and still offers a powerful emotional punch today.

Massenet is know primarily for two of his operas, Manon and Werther. But he was a prolific composer, and between 1867 and his death in 1912, he provided the French operatic world with a series of works of great variety and invention. He was a highly trained professional and very successful musician working always with a greatly developed sense of craft (ironically, perhaps, a fact that has contributed to his somewhat ambiguous position critically, in the end). His work is drawn from a strikingly varied stock of authors (Flaubert, Corneille, Anatole France, Perrault, Cervantes, Rabelais) and his responses to them are often charged with an innate theatricality. Many are today forgotten, but others have been revived and recorded and appreciated anew. Check out a few of my favorites...

Le Roi de Lahore (The first new work to be stage at the Palais Garnier)
Seductive exoticism…at the same time often ravishing and inevitably slightly cheesy.

Le Cid
A true French grand opera spectacle with ballets, processions, lavish settings, and some powerfully dramatic scenes.

Esclarmonde (Massenet's favorite opera, written for the beautiful American soprano Sybil Sanderson)
A “magic” opera (the first operatic production that used projections to suggest rapid scene changes), with rich orchestrations and lush harmonies to accompany a Byzantine plot. (For real…the opera is actually set in Byzantium!)

La Navarraise
Massenet tries “verismo”…the piece is set in the thick of a Spanish civil war in 1874. Like Tosca, somewhat of a “shabby little shocker” and, also like Tosca, bold, obvious, and very effective.

Cendrillon
Massenet’s tale of Cinderella. Wit, elegance, charm, a bit of parody, a bit of pseudo-baroque and some exquisite love music.

Don Quichotte
His last operatic success, written for Chaliapin, the famous Russian bass. A very skillful mingling of sentiment and comedy, pastiche and contemporary style. The death scene of the Don is famously moving.




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