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The Indiana Daily Student

arts

‘Werther’ premieres at IU Opera Theater

Werther

The story of a poet’s unrequited love and psychological downfall will be explored this weekend as the IU Opera Theater presents Jules Massenet’s “Werther.”

Performances will take place at 8 p.m. Friday and Saturday at the Musical Arts Center, with additional shows at 8 p.m. Nov. 1 and 2.

This will mark the first time IU Opera has performed “Werther” in 38 years.

French composer Massenet completed the four-act opera in 1887 to a libretto based on the 1774 novel “The Sorrows of Young Werther” by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

Massenet attempted to have “Werther” performed at Paris’s Opéra-Comique, but he was rejected on the grounds that the opera was too serious. “Werther” eventually premiered in Vienna in 1892.

“It’s a very, very challenging opera because we have scenes outdoors in a garden, inside by a Christmas tree, outside in a snowstorm and scenes of violence,” Stage Director Candace Evans, who previously directed “Candide” and “Akhnaten” for IU Opera, said,. “There’s a great deal of diversity.”

Rehearsals for “Werther” have taken place over the last three weeks. Although the show features two sets of casts, Evans said she has not had difficulty with maintaining consistency because everyone works together.

“Usually if I have a double cast in the professional world, there’s a certain degree of competitiveness, which is not present here,” she said. “Because of it being a strongly collegial learning environment, there’s a great deal of cooperation and sharing of experience.”

Evans also said she has found it to be a beneficial experience for the performers because their different strengths and weaknesses have allowed them to learn from one another.

“It’s a very mixed bag, but everybody brings a gift,” she said.

The expansive set for “Werther” was borrowed from a production by the Minnesota Opera.

“It’s set in the Second Industrial Revolution, so the incorporation of steel and railroads and manufacturing was suddenly what life was all about,” Evans said.

Evans described the character of Werther as “a poet, a romantic man who is probably living in the wrong time.”

She said he is often seen as moody because of his sense of poetry, and her biggest challenge was maintaining psychological tension throughout the opera.

“The music is very illustrative of psychology and because of that it can become melodramatic,” she said. “So keeping the balance of the story and the music and the psychological and not having it get overwrought, that’s the biggest challenge.”

Evans said she never tries to send a particular message to audiences of the shows she directs because each person comes with a different perspective. Instead, she aims to accurately tell the story the music dictates.

“A well-presented story is always my goal, and then the audience will hopefully enter that world and combine their own current situation with what they see and then hopefully be touched in a very personal way,” she said.

Follow reporter Rachel Osman on Twitter@rachosman.

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