03/04/17 – Werther – 1pm

Metropolitan Opera

Werther
Composed by Jules Massenet
Libretto by Édouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann

• sung in French
• ESTIMATED RUN TIME 2 HRS 54 MINS
• front page photo credit: Marty Sohl/Metropolitan Opera

Tenor sensation Vittorio Grigolo is Werther, the young poet who seeks the unattainable love of the beautiful Charlotte, sung by mezzo-soprano Isabel Leonard. Edward Gardner conducts Richard Eyre’s visual feast of a production.

World premiere: Vienna Court Opera, 1892. One of opera’s greatest depictions of impossible love, Werther is based on Goethe’s epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. A sensation when it appeared in 1774 (and partly inspired by the author’s own experiences), it tells the story of a melancholy poet whose love for a married woman and general disaffection with the world lead to his suicide. The archetype of the artistic, brilliant, and doomed young man rebelling against the establishment has resonated through the ages in literature, theater, film, and music.