I have not made up my mind, of course, about it all!
Charlotte, in the opera Werther, as well as in Goethe's letters, is a rather difficult character to understand from our present day perspective.
The whole social setting around her is also terribly dated and only understandable through a good historical background, where bourgeois values and religion can explain the weight of what could be seen as conventions, or the "normal" ethic at the end of the 18th century, in that part of Germany among well-bred people.
I have always found her position unaccepable, probably because I was brought up by an early 'feminist' who faced a divorce when it was not quite the fashion, and decided to settle alone with her young daughter far from her family.
When I re-read that early romantic drama which set fire to Europe through Goethe's novel in the form of letters, I feel uncomfortable.
The only real good thing about it is what Massenet implies through his music. The death of the hero, musically splendid, is vocally, rather too long.
I always feel like telling Werther just to mime his death, and let the orchestra do the rest, that would be even more heartbreaking and less ridiculous. In recent years I have seen Rolando Villazon twice as Werther and he saved the show, doing the perfect loony lost lover, even in the last Bastille production when he was perched on his rock throughout the whole opera, scribbling his verses like mad and whining his love sufferings and mal à l'âme. As for his Charlotte, sung by Susan Graham, I did not like her at all. Obviously the acting was only emphasized on the maternal duty towards her siblings and even when she had to let her passion show, she acted like a "mama". She looked too homely. Her voice did not strike the cello touch needed to recall Rita Gorr's glowing passion in her low range.
In fact, musically, 'Charlotte' is credible!I have illustrated the role with Rita Gorr. She still is my favourite for this role. Seduction is in the voice! Charlotte, who is sung by a mezzo, has to be attractive. If the voice is like a cello, the look could be forgotten. If the voice has the seduction of a shady kind, like an anti-Carmen, but with some wilderness in it too, that is fine by me!
Of course Charlotte is very "tame' she is the replacement Mother for her siblings, her father relies on her. Her future is already settled at the very start of the drama. She is engaged to Albert. Her dying Mother had made her promise to marry him, and Albert is praised by her family and friends for his qualities as a lawyer and young man. This kind of outlook on the feminine standard has been going on for centuries, and some women writers began to claim the right to be educated like men and choose their lover, asserting the right to say "no" to arranged marriages. This is starting with Beaumarchais, and taken over by feminine writers like Jane Austen to an absolute demand of equal rights with somone like Virginia Woolf in her 'Room of one's own'.
Although Charlotte falls in love at the very start of the opera, love at first sight, a passionate vision, she does not give way to her passion, but the music does more than the words. If she had followed her passion, Werther would have been saved. They could have eloped, gone against duty, bourgeois commitments; they might have shared some good time, perhaps realised after all that passion does not last, or else Werther would have been her eternal teenager lover, with his head stuck in the stars and his heart hanging on sunsets, oceans and mountain peaks and she would have stuck to her maternal instinct. At least she would have had her fling! Above all, Werther would have been saved.
The passion expressed in Massenet's scores gives more intensity to the characters. The young Werther is not so much arguing and bizarre and more of a lover type, which makes the whole drama even more painful and somehow outdated. These characters do not express their real motivations; they seem to act like puppets; duty and commitments stifle their inner motivations. Despair and suicide is Werther's only solution to escape from deep sorrow, a kind of lunatic illness.
Duty and obedience is Charlotte's only motto, asking for too much from her passionate lover. Because of the music, this drama goes deeply into one's inner thoughts and is the only possible incentive to go and listen to this tale again. Charlotte could bring in it a little of the harlot to make it more spicy...and not wait until Werther's last dying words to tell him she loves him...
Albert is a dreadful character in both the novel and the opera. He knows (in the Letters) that his friend has a strong tendency to suicide, and yet he lends him his pistols, and even asks his wife to fetch them and give them to Werther. This is strongly criticised in France in a novel (Xavier De Maistre 'voyages autour de ma chambre') where Albert is accused of being a false friend who sent the poor lover to commit suicide. I myself feel strongly like this XVIIIth century gentleman writer!
Of course Charlotte knows all about it at that very moment she gives Werther the pistols. So why did she do it?
"Il remit le petit billet à Albert, qui se tourna froidement vers sa femme, et lui dit: "Donne-lui les pistolets. Je lui souhaite un bon voyage" ajouta-t-il en s'adressant au domestique. Ce fut un coup de foudre pour Charlotte." (The servant gave the note to Albert, who coldly turned round to his wife and said 'Give him the pistols. I wish him a good journey' he added facing the servant. These words sounded like a bolt of lightning to Charlotte'
But so why didn't she rush out to join him without the pistols and just by doing something like that, decide for another ending to this weeping willow drama?
Fate... the will of the writer...the beginning of romanticism...The spleen..all that to save the honour of a married woman, who otherwise would have become a little bit of a harlot?
Beautiful scores of passion in the music, for the tenor and the mezzo, and not really for a soprano, and indeed the cello type of voice suits this character better, if the voice is of that brassy medium with lots of vibrations. Otherwise, it can be very boring.
The 2010 Bastille's Jacquot production which I followed on my TV screen did not convince me, nor did the singers. Jonas Kaufman does not have the type of voice I would naturally love; he has got the right looks but not the voice, no radiance in it for me, dull and no vibrations, too "cold" and Sophie Koch seems out of breath too often and lost in this huge empty stage, very well suited to her Werther, both 'cold' and technically nearly perfect and rather boring: musically efficient without the necessary emotion. Yet I remember reading that audiences wept a lot at Bastille at this production.
So, I will set off to Lyon with great motivations: a new setting under Rolando Villazon who already has given a few tips for his vision from what he fairly well knows of this opera.
No doubt there will be surprises and deep psychological insights, alla Rolando Villazon, in the characters expressed through his beloved 'clowns', clowns and miming to get away from this stifling reality, perhaps to express their dreams; Charlotte and Werther happy in a dream, like what is implied in the musical themes of their love? De Maistre would have cried even more if he had had the chance to listen to Massenet's Werther...
Now there is a new-born Charlotte for this Werther in the Opera de Lyon's 2011 production : Karine Deshayes.
Through this Fauré Album which I loved I became a fan of hers.
I went to Avignon in October to actually feel her voice; she is a rather 'light' mezzo with a real vibrant medium, rich and colourful, and a seductive and easy overflowing high range. I fell in love with her album 'Le jardin Clos' which I talked about and I now know how beautiful she sounds. She gave a recital at the Palais des Papes, the rich colours and musicality of her voice were a wonder that night; luckily because I did not enjoy the soprani at all.
Some of my poor quality pictures of the evening in Avignon with Cherubini and Karine Deshayes:
To keep in touch with this production which I understand will be saved by poetry and imagination alla Rolando Villazon, if you are in France:
http://www.playtv.fr/programme/111105-une-journee-a-l-opera-de-lyon.html
Off to Lyon tomorrow morning!
(Rolando Villazon's drawing for Werther settings)
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