A new production of Massenet's Werther provided a perfect finale for the 2016 season at Bologna’s Teatro Comunale, with tenor Juan Diego Flórez making his stage debut in the title role (having sung the role in a concert performance in Paris earlier this year).

The new production directed by Rosetta Cucchi maximized the tenor’s presence on stage - in the whole first act, when not acting, Flórez was sitting in an armchair at the side of the stage, looking as if deep in thought.

The scenery by Tiziano Santi featured a cross-section of the living room in Charlotte’s home surrounded by the woods. The seasons were visibly messed up: not only were the children singing Christmas carols in July, the leaves were also falling copiously from the trees. Charlotte and Albert were doubled by two actors supplying scenes from their bourgeois everyday life: kissing goodbye in the prelude, picnicking before going to church at the opening of the second act.

The children and the Bailli opened the opera on a conveniently cheerful note, with the Bailli’s friends joking entertainingly. When Albert arrived, Charlotte and Werther were shown flirting below the trees in the darkness. In the third act, the scene narrowed to Charlotte’s living room, with Sophie’s visit and Werther sudden appearance followed by Albert’s return. The musical intermezzo leads to the fourth act with Werther’s death.

After this debut, Flórez will certainly have the opportunity to delve deeper in this complex character. Vocally he was in very good shape, and literally brought down the house with his popular aria "Pourquoi me réveiller?" At the second performance on December 18th the audience insisted so much that he and the conductor were almost forced to encore the aria.

Isabel Leonard was a charming Charlotte, her darkly colored mezzo more at ease in the increasingly dramatic music of the third and fourth acts. However, in spite of their supposed passion, on stage the two lovers remained rather distant from each other, giving the impression of having put more care on the vocal aspects of their characters then on creating an active interaction between them.

The rest of the cast was up to the leading couple, with Jean-François Lapointe as Albert, Luca Gallo in the role of the Bailli, and Ruth Iniesta, a tomboyish looking Sophie.

Maestro Michele Mariotti, the company’s musical director, was also making his debut with Massenet’s opera. It turned out to be an auspicious debut: perfectly followed by the orchestra, the conductor put great care and commitment in his lead, and highlighted all the details in the orchestral score, with compelling results especially in the third and fourth acts.