Benoît Jacquot's stodgy, bargain-basement Werther —
introduced at Covent Garden in 2004 but filmed at the Opéra
Bastille in January 2010 — lacks flair as sorely as it does
good, old-fashioned production values. A messy blue cyclorama, a
steeply raked floor, a high wall that is placed diagonally and
broken by a barn door: that's Act I. Same cyclorama, a low wall
placed on the other diagonal: that's Act II. Act III, which
takes place indoors, opens in a big, empty hall and ends in a
sparsely furnished bedchamber. The windows are frosted. Some
snow falls.
The video direction, by Jacquot and Louise
Narboni, offers frequent distractions. Wandering into the wings,
the camera catches cast members limbering up or scurrying into
position. Soaring to the flies, it punctuates the action with
occasional bird's-eye views. From time to time, a lone soloist
is seen in long shot, poised at the footlights as if fixing to
leap from a cliff into the churning sea, which is to say the
visible orchestra pit. Ah, the Alienation Effect! If the
Brechtian mishmash of conventional screen narrative and
documentary clichés calls to mind the recent movie-house Tosca
(which intercut footage of Angela Gheorghiu on the set and in
the recording studio), it ought to: that one was a Jacquot
special, too.
But thanks to Jonas Kaufmann in the
hero's signature blue coat and yellow waistcoat, the dark-eyed
Sophie Koch as the tormented Charlotte, and Michel Plasson in
the pit, this Werther comes up trumps. Bearing an
uncanny resemblance to the riveting stage and screen actress
Fanny Ardant, Koch conveys passion smothered by duty, decorum
and cowardice, shaping her music in smooth, smoky tones that
quiver with intensity. "Expressive" intonation — deliberate
straying from the center of the pitch — is a risky game, to be
indulged in sparingly, but in Act III, Koch makes it work. The
saxophone obbligato at this point is as eloquent an example as
any of the detailed poetry Plasson coaxes from the orchestra
throughout.
Still, this is Kaufmann's show. These
days, it seems, he can do no wrong. Singers producing beautiful
music do not always make beautiful faces, but Kaufmann does; the
camera loves him, whether it catches him in silent meditation,
in gentle reverie or in full cry, like a raging tiger. Where
other tenors wallow in emotional display, Kaufmann turns inward.
On his broad palette of states of the soul and spirit, self-pity
is conspicuous by its absence. For the opening anthem to nature,
the stage is bathed in deep purple, but Kaufmann's tones convey
the golden sunset glow of what cinematographers know as the
magic hour; later, Kaufmann summons up his own deep purple where
it counts, in the moody Act III rhapsody "Pourquoi me
réveiller." His death scene seems the promise of a Tristan of
incomparable grace.
Albert, the husband chosen
for Charlotte by her dead mother, is a thankless part, but
Ludovic Tézier makes the most of his chances; in brief
one-on-one encounters with Werther and Charlotte, he registers
not as a singing cipher but as a human being with real crosses
to bear. Crystalline in timbre, with a delicious, flickering
vibrato and pointed articulation, Anne-Catherine Gillet does the
same for Sophie. Without overplaying their hands, these artists
reveal the price Werther and Charlotte's misery exacts from
those who love them.
The supporting roles, which lend
themselves to caricature, are handled capably and for the most
part with discretion. There is shameless overacting by Andreas
Jäggi in the part of Schmidt, a drunk, which is no excuse.
