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The Opera Quarterly 18.3 (2002) 390-395



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Kraus and Company:
Werther on Disc

William Albright

[Figures]

Werther: Alfredo Kraus Käthchen: Lynda Richardson
Charlotte: Tatiana Troyanos Brühlmann: Michael Lewis
Sophie: Christine Barbaux London Philharmonic Orchestra
Albert: Matteo Manuguerra Covent Garden Singers
Le Bailli: Jules Bastin Michel Plasson, conductor
Johann: Jean-Philippe Lafont EMI Classics 5 66516 2 (2 CDs)
Schmidt: Philip Langridge  
Werther: Alfredo Kraus Käthchen: Barbara Bystrom
Charlotte: Régine Crespin Brühlmann: Dennis Steff
Sophie: Kathleen Battle Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus
Albert: Lenus Carlson Richard Bonynge, conductor
Le Bailli: Andrew Foldi Live performance of 3 February 1979
Johann: Andrij Dobriansky Gala gl 100.559 (2 CDs)
Schmidt: Nico Castel  

FEW operatic roles have been sung by as many different types of voice as the name part in Massenet's Werther. Heldentenoren able to survive the long-term, large-bore vocalism of Wagner's epic operas have taken it up. So have the lightweight tenori di grazia who can spin out and toss off the elegantly florid writing of Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, and Mozart. Ditto the tenori di forza who can rattle the rafters in Verdi and Puccini. It has even been essayed by baritones eager to poach a stellar assignment—not to mention a fifteen-minute death scene—from their treble-clef colleagues. As a result of magical performances by the legendary Tito Schipa, who with the aid of some transpositions sang what was perhaps his favorite role for thirty years, and the equally fabled Alfredo Kraus, many opera lovers have come to consider the ideal instrument for Massenet's suicidally obsessed lover to be a dry, slightly hazy, but not insubstantial lyric tenor voice, one infused with touching morbidezza and capable of both clarion high notes and dreamily floated ones. [End Page 390]

Rejected by Paris's Opéra-Comique, Werther had its premiere in Vienna in 1892, performed in the language of the literary giant who was catapulted to fame by Die Leiden des jungen Werthers, the 1774 epistolary novel that inspired the work. The title role was created by the Belgian tenor Ernest van Dyck (1861- 1923), who could have sung it either in Goethe's native tongue or, as he demonstrates in his 1905 recording of the aria "Pourquoi me réveiller," in the original libretto's French. Van Dyck was a noted Tristan, Siegfried, Tannhäuser, Siegmund, Lohengrin, and Parsifal, and it was apparently at his suggestion that the composer added the strenuous second-act aria beginning "Un autre est son époux!" (the so-called "Désolation de Werther"), in which the opera's protagonist gives vent to his despair over his hopeless love for Charlotte, but the polyglot tenor also did lighter duty as Massenet's Des Grieux and Gounod's Faust. Those last two roles were also in the repertory of the equally versatile, Polish-born Jean de Reszke (1850-1925), the first Metropolitan Opera Werther (in 1894) and a leading interpreter of Gounod's Roméo as well as Otello and Wagner's leather-lunged heroes. The next Met Werther, in 1910, was the Frenchman Edmond Clément (1867-1928), who had a mere wisp of a voice but made up in artistry what he lacked in decibels. Similarly small-voiced but polished Italian tenors who made notable Werthers (but never at the Met) were Giuseppe Anselmi (1876-1929) and Cesare Valletti. Nobody ever accused their fellow countryman Franco Corelli of any shortcomings in the volume department, and his Met Werther (1971) was as glamorous as it was vocally potent. The French tenor Georges Thill recorded a complete Werther in 1931 with a beautiful but spongy voice that could nonetheless withstand the rigors of Tannhäuser, Lohengrin, and Parsifal as well as Guillaume Tell's Arnold, Turandot's Calaf, and Pagliacci's Canio. With some adjustments in the vocal line made in 1902 by the uncommonly accommodating composer himself, bel canto baritone Mattia Battistini (1856-1928) was able to appropriate the role. 1 The revised version was unheard in America until 1989, when it was a vehicle for...

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