Speranza
Werther {45} Metropolitan Opera House:
10/6/1979.
(Review)
Metropolitan Opera House
October 6,
1979
WERTHER {45}
Massenet-É. Blau/Milliet/G.
Hartmann
Werther.................Neil
Shicoff
Charlotte...............Tatiana
Troyanos
Albert..................Ryan
Edwards
Sophie..................Kathleen
Battle
Bailiff.................Ara
Berberian
Schmidt.................Charles
Anthony
Johann..................Andrij
Dobriansky
Käthchen................Lorraine
Keane
Brühlmann...............Edward
Ghazal
Conductor...............Richard
Bonynge
Production..............Paul-Emile Deiber
Stage
Director..........Fabrizio Melano
Designer................Rudolf
Heinrich
Lighting designer.......Gil Wechsler
Werther received four
performances this season.
Review of Speight Jenkins in the New York
Post
Met's 'Werther' comes alive
It's taken eight years and 29
performances but on Saturday night the Metropolitan Opera finally presented a
dramatically plausible "Werther."
Onstage were young people who looked
their roles and lived them to the hilt and Massenet's music suddenly became a
moving extension of the action, not an exercise in
sentimentality.
Charlotte should be beautiful, in love with Werther and
held from him by the strictures of morality, while Werther must be smitten and
suffering.
It may sound easy to pull off but most Charlottes have been
too mature and lacking in desperate intensity, and Werthers have been unable to
convey the total despair that would make a man in his early 20s shoot himself
out of frustrated passion.
In Tatiana Troyanos and Neil Shicoff, however,
the Metropolitan found two artists who surpassed all obstacles and made their
characters completely believable.
Troyanos' easy high notes, her
overall richness of timbre and her splendid taste and phrasing more than offset
the lack of ideal clarity to her mezzo soprano.
Her French was idiomatic, and
her sublimated passion extraordinary.
************************************
But the opera lives or dies with
its hero, and Shicoff was amazing.
In his three prior seasons at the Met he has
often overdone his romantic acting.
Now in the most romantic of all his roles,
he was a model of restraint.
The frustration, the agonies of longing came
through his every movement - and some that he visibly restrained himself from
making - and his face revealed a soul in torture.
He sang with great
sensitivity.
Some of the phrasing in "Porquoi me reveiller" seemed a trifle off
-he twice leapt to the high note a fraction late - and his Italianate voice
lacked a bit of the brightness needed for piercing Massenet's Wagnerian
orchestra.
But his French was good.
His line was elegant; he never forced, never
held a note too long and took plenty of vocal risks.
He created a character as
musically viable and interesting as Werther, in my experience, has ever
been.
Of equal Importance was the work of. Richard Boynge, whose
conducting of the opera has developed since his performance last winter. More of
the moods came through, the romance in the orchestra burst forth and the rhythm
was stronger. If only he could temper the orchestra's volume just a shade, he
would be even better.
Kathleen Battle again was utterly charming as
Sophie, her top lovely end her acting enchanting, and Ryan Edwards as Albert
seemed almost too avuncular, but his anger and jealousy were well expressed and
he brought a full, resonant baritone to the part.
Of high quality too was
Ara Berberian in the thankless role of Charlotte's father. What little he had to
sing, he sang well.
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