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The Yale University Library reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order, if, in its judgement fulfillment of the order would involve violation of copyright law. 137 C.F.R. §201.14 2018 FRENCH OPERA AT THE FIN DE SIÉCLE Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style Steven Huebner tu OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Werther STAGECRAFT Massenet's delay in getting down to Werther in the early 1880s may have been caused partly by difficulties in extracting an opera from an epistolary novel. The succession of Werther's letters, mainly to his friend Wilhelm, traces the psycho- logical state of the protagonist along a downward curve of increasing despair and alienation, after his initial optimistic identification with resplendent Nature and elation during the first days with his beloved Lotte. Goethe's heroine, like Prévost's Manon, appears mainly through the eyes of her obsessive admirer. As with the figure of Manon, the stage would require Charlotte to have a larger degree of dramatic agency in her own right. But in contrast to Prévost's novel, which contains a rapid succession of coups de théâtre as well as colourful plot twists and geographic displacements, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther is an interior drama that proceeds relentlessly towards an ever darkening horizon. Hence its difficulty for the opera composer, especially one like Massenet who valued effective theatrical entrances, exits, and contrasts as ends in themselves—reflected, as we have observed, by his tripartite division of opera into the dramatic, lyrical, and theatrical. Furthermore (in the realm of the `dramatic'), turning Charlotte into a sharply profiled character suitable for the stage required ingenuity. If ever a model existed that posed obstacles to the stagecraft of the composer and his collaborators, surely this was the one. According to Paul Milliet, the libretto he first produced adhered more closely to the novel than what emerged after a `succession of cuts and arbitrary additions'.' One can only presume that in Milliet's first version Goethe's lyricism outweighed an inclination to produce a colourful plot with dynamic circulation of characters. Milliet implied that Hartmann was to blame for these changes and that the publisher was happier when Blau became involved with the project. Notwithstanding Milliet's obvious disappointment, the cuts and additions also probably sustained Massenet's interest by resulting in a more kinetic and visually enticing production. Nonetheless, Werther still does exhibit a remarkable blend of stageworthiness and fidelity to the epistolary antecedent, including borrowings of many of Goethe's expressions. Paradoxically, the work in its final form follows the events of its model ' 'Werther', L'Art du théâtre, 31 July 1903. I 113 i Jules Massenet more closely than any of Massenet's previous operas, including Manon. A sub- stantial distortion of Goethe at the end has cast a long enough shadow to obscure this fact for many critics since the première. Whereas in the novel Werther dies alone, in the opera Charlotte rushes into his room for a final heart-wrenching duet after the suicidal gunshot: David Garrick's version of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, as well as Gounod's operatic adaptation, revisited. Although Charlotte's voice is not heard often in Goethe's work, the creators of the opera did what they could to preserve it in order to fashion a stageworthy character. For example, the exchanges between Charlotte and Werther in the first act follow the two letters in the novel where Goethe includes the greatest number of direct quotations from Charlotte, those of 16 June and 10 September 1771. In the opera, the time-frame of these letters is collapsed into a single evening, with the ball setting—a natural one for an opera composer—drawn from the first letter and the ambience of a moonlit evening in a garden from the second. Massenet organizes his German waltz and character entrances to suggest the ball as an event that occurs elsewhere while the plot advances in the foreground of the Bailli's house and garden. The narrative is mainly driven forwards at this point by Albert's return (while Charlotte and Werther attend the ball), an event that does indeed happen between the same letters of 16 June and 10 September in Goethe's novel. Massenet thus telescopes developments separated by weeks in the source to produce his much favoured ploy of suggesting simultaneous actions in two different locations, an eminently theatrical strategy with roots sunk deep in the repertory of grand opera. At the same time, exhibiting a more characteristically fin-de-siècle compositional concern, he effects seamless continuity among discrete musical sections on the local level. Charlotte and Werther return from the ball in an effective passage of transition where the waltz music sounds for the first time since they left, now in alternation with the clair de lune motif.2 Rather than begin the famous clair de lune duet in its F major tonic, Massenet eases into it with development in another key, while the lighting instructions call for the moon gradually to become brighter: Wagner's 'art of transition', Massenet-style. The conclusion of the novel furnished additional material for the opera. Goethe breaks out of epistolary form following Werther's letter of 6 December 1772 in a section called `Editor to Reader'. The ostensible explanation is that Werther's remaining letters are too sporadic to provide a coherent narrative flow. The Editor completes the story and turns out to be omniscient, able to report on the inner thoughts not only of Werther but of Charlotte as well, while he continues to pres- ent letter fragments. Once again the librettists mined a section where Charlotte I Julien Torchet wrote that Massenet first used the clair de lune music in a piano piece; preview article on the 1903 Werther in La Semaine française, 16 Apr. 1903. He recounts an anecdote of how Massenet one day brought the piece to Hartmann who found it so beautiful that he urged him to keep it in order to incorporate the music into a future opera. 114 Werther appears to the reader in a relatively unmediated form. Following Albert's directive, Goethe's Lotte encourages Werther on 20 December to find another woman worthy of his affections. After he responds with bitter irony, she instructs him not to return until Christmas Eve. The duet analogous to this—set in September, with- out bitter irony on Werther's part, and with a Charlotte who rather more firmly tries to distance him—occurs near the end of the second act of the opera. Before this, Massenet's Albert puts his diversionary tactic into practice himself. Framed by the lilting aria 'Du gai soleil' sung by Charlotte's sister Sophie, he suggests to Werther that she is a good catch. Her age changes from 11 in the Goethe to 15 for this purpose. In this way an insignificant character in the novel becomes a full-fledged player who adds both an extra fold in the plot in the second act and a foil during Charlotte's long scene at the beginning of the third. Also drawn from the `Editor to Reader' section is the encounter between Charlotte and Werther on Christmas Eve (21 December in the novel), with its recitation of Ossianic poetry and Charlotte's plea that he never return. The omniscient narrator describes her confused and troubled frame of mind. Charlotte fundamentally wishes to remain faithful to her husband, all the while feeling that Werther is her true soulmate. So strong is this sense, that in thinking about which of her friends she might encourage Werther to marry, she acknow- ledges that she finds something wrong with each in order to keep Werther for herself. The portrait is subtle. Out of marital and maternal duty, she cannot openly declare love for Werther, nor perhaps even admit it to herself. The accent in appreciations of Goethe's Werther has naturally been given to the interaction of the title character's inner world with external reality, yet Lotte has an inner life as well. As Werther reads Ossian she identifies so closely with the dark fate of the characters that she breaks down in tears: 'She became confused and pressed his hand tightly against her breast and, with a plaintive motion, moved closer to him. Their burning cheeks touched, and the world ended for them.'3 Lotte faints upon hearing the news of Werther's death; later the townspeople fear for her life. So close was she to Werther that a part of her seems to die as well. The text does not allow the reader unequivocally to call this love. But it does not per- mit Lotte's attitude towards Albert to be described in this way either. To be sure, by making her emotions more explicit for the stage, Massenet and his librettist trod on such ambiguities. In their reading Lotte is indeed 'in love' with Werther, certainly not an extravagant position. Let us see how expression of that love made for strong music theatre and how this stagecraft was welded to a fin-de-siècle preoccupation with overall musical coherence.