Deutsche Grammophon Releases an All-New Recording of Werther, 4/3

In May, 2011, tenor Rolando Villazón returned to Covent Garden in the title role of Massenet's Werther. Deutsche Grammophon was there to capture this occasion. This complete recording of the opera will be available in the US on April 3, 2012.

The title role of Werther is one of opera's great outside figures and also one of the Mexican tenor's signature roles which he first assumed in Nice in 2006 and later at the Vienna Opera in 2008 as well as in Paris. Of Villazón's return to Covent Garden the Financial Times noted, "... there was hardly a corner of the character's soul that Villazón left unexplored."

Villazón was joined by French mezzo Sophie Koch who sang the tragically conflicted Charlotte – for her, too, a kind of signature role in which she has been acclaimed in Vienna, Madrid and Paris as well as London. Koch has appeared on many of opera's greatest stages and on a number of opera recordings on both Deutsche Grammophon and Decca Classics including Werther and Der Rosenkavalier, both on DVD.

These performances were conducted by the company's music director, Antonio Pappano, an interpreter of great flexibility and dramatic insight. As the Financial Times wrote, "the outstanding conducting of Antonio Pappano, working with a Royal Opera orchestra on top form, made sure that … Massenet's opera blazed vividly into life." The cast includes Japanese soprano Eri Nakamura who personified Charlotte's spirited younger sister Sophie, the Norwegian baritone Audun Iversen as her unloved husband Albert, and the distinguished French baritone Alain Vernhes as her solidly bourgeois father, the Bailiff.