Lovelorn masterclass

Werther; The Adventures of Mr Broucek
Opera North

The Truth about Love
Linbury Studio

Massenet’s Werther is a tricky opera, in fact may well not be susceptible of more than a production which leaves you feeling that you could easily live with its not very numerous highlights. One of its chief problems is highlighted in Gerald Larner’s incisive notes to the new Opera North production: ‘The problem with a Werther opera is that no libretto, unless it completely traduces Goethe’s original, can compensate for the obvious disadvantage that, because Charlotte is either engaged or married to Albert and is determined to give Werther no encouragement, there can be no mutual declaration of love, no full-scale duet for the two protagonists.’ Opera, as trendy theorists incessantly remind us, is crucially concerned with transgression, but in Werther there is none, so we have to make do with a hero who moves from misery to suicide, and the only climax Massenet can contrive is an inordinately protracted death scene (24 minutes, according to the producer Tom Cairns). So how does it become a full-length opera? By dint of lavish applications of local colour, including the notorious coaching of the children to practise Christmas carols in the summer, so that they can repeat them, hopefully to heart-breaking effect, in the background, during the last scene.

If there is one tenor who is expert in portraying lovelornness, it is Paul Nilon, and he gives a wonderfully complete account of a role which grants him one supreme opportunity to sing, the fine ‘Pourquoi me reveiller?’, and many opportunities, which he eagerly seizes, to act desperately. He does not cut a romantic figure, but it is hardly necessary that he should. Alice Coote, as his beloved Charlotte, is just as homely — this is an original take on the situation, and a convincing one.