Benoît Jacquot’s unfussy 2004 staging of Massenet’s Werther is back at Covent Garden for its third revival, conducted by Edward Gardner and handsomely cast, with Juan Diego Flórez in the title role, Isabel Leonard as Charlotte, and Jacques Imbrailo as Albert. On opening night, however, some of the singers took a while to get into their stride, and it was not until the final acts, as Werther’s obsession with Charlotte gradually intensifies, that the opera’s power was fully apparent.
Flórez’s Werther, very much the impulsive romantic dreamer and less self-pitying than some, is at his best in moments of brooding introspection and uneasy calm. Lorsque l’Enfant Revient du Voyage touches us with its sad eloquence, and his hushed way with the death scene is extraordinarily moving. But his voice occasionally lacks the cutting edge for Massenet’s grander climaxes and, in Act One in particular, he was sometimes obscured by the orchestra.
Leonard, with her creamy tone, sounds lovely in her house debut, but is comparatively disengaged in the opening scenes, her initial, confused attraction to Werther not quite registering as it might. She comes into her own, though, as moral uncertainty looms in Act Three, with an account of the letter scene that is all the more powerful for its restraint. Her interpretation, one suspects, will deepen as the run progresses.
Imbrailo makes a fine Albert, attractive if priggish. Heather Engebretson is the sweetly naive Sophie, Alastair Miles the bluff but warm-hearted Bailli. Gardner, meanwhile, is superb in his understanding of both the score’s emotional complexities and its dark Wagnerian undertow.
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