WERTHER Comes to the National Theatre in Prague

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe‘s literary works have inspired numerous artists, including composers. The most acclaimed operas based on them are Ambrois Thomas’s Mignon, Charles Gounod’s Faust and Jules Massenet’s Werther.

Soon after its publication, Goethe’s 1774 epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther became a cult book. The work is a seminal text of the German proto-Romantic literary movement known as Sturm und Drang, whose adherents placed emphasis on human emotionality as the answer to the detached rationalism of the Enlightenment era. Linking up to his teacher Thomas and his colleague Gounod, the compositional style of Massenet’s opera is primarily noted for abundant distinct melody and colourful orchestration, inspired in part by Richard Wagner. The evocative musical idiom serves to underline a story replete with passions the protagonists fail to satisfy.

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