IRISH National Opera is taking to the road again, for an extended tour of one of French composer Jules Massenet’s best-loved operas, Werther, a story based on Goethe’s great novel of painful and destructive suppressed love.
Werther directed by Sophie Motley plays at Lime Tree Theatre on Saturday April 29, 8pm.
The title role is sung by the prize-winning young Italian tenor Paride Cataldo who is making his INO debut. “Paride Cataldo’s D’Annunzio all but steals the show,” wrote BBC Music Magazine of his performance in Dutch National Opera’s production of Willem Jeths’s Ritratto. Werther’s love interest, Charlotte, the woman who married his best friend, is Cork mezzo-soprano Niamh O’Sullivan. Niamh, who has been praised for her “bewitchingly beautiful, dark vibrant voice” Süddeutsche Zeitung), won plaudits for her performances in INO’s Olivier Award-winning production of Vivaldi’s Bajazet and also in Donnacha Dennehy and Enda Walsh’s The First Child.
The new production, which relocates the time and place from late 18th-century Germany to a setting much closer to home, is directed by Sophie Motley (artistic director of The Everyman in Cork), designed by Sarah Bacon (winner of an Irish Times Irish Theatre award for set design), and conducted by Philipp Pointner (“Philipp Pointner makes splendid music and the ensemble of singers perform their difficult parts brilliantly throughout,” Süddeutsche Zeitung).
The opera is based on the loosely autobiographical epistolary novel, The Sorrow of Young Werther, that catapulted the 24-year-old Goethe to fame in 1774. The composer visited the house in Wetzlar where Goethe had written the book and where Massenet’s publisher gave him a copy of the book. He started reading it in what he described as “one of those immense beer halls which are everywhere in Germany,” and the impact of the book was huge. “Such delirious, ecstatic passion,” he wrote, “brought tears to my eyes.”
Irish National Opera’s artistic director Fergus Sheil says “Although the opera Werther is named after the leading tenor, our experience of this heart-breaking story is told mostly through the leading mezzo-soprano, Charlotte. Werther falls madly in love with Charlotte, but she is the one who has choices to make agonising choices between family, duty and the demands of her heart. Our Werther, Italian tenor Paride Cataldo, has a voice to dream of and he is matched with one of the most exceptional Irish artists Niamh O’Sullivan, who makes her role debut as Charlotte. Massenet’s music is remarkable for its musical richness and emotional depth.”
