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Meet and Greet: The amazing musicians who collaborated to bring together Lucia di Lammermoor
Don’t miss Part II: The Creative Team
Watch and Listen Wednesday: Lucia di Lammermoor
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Rodarte Sisters to create costumes for LA Opera’s Don Giovanni
From luckymag.com:
“They were the creative force behind Black Swan‘s beautiful ballet costumes; now, Rodarte’s Mulleavy sisters are taking their talents to the opera world. The pair will be designing the costumes for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s new production of Don Giovanni, which will debut on May 18.”
How Well do you Know Donizetti?
Gaetano Donizetti
b Bergamo, November 29, 1797; d Bergamo, April 8, 1848
With nearly 70 operas to his credit, Gaetano Donizetti was the leading Italian composer in the decade between Vincenzo Bellini’s death and the ascent of Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in the northern Italian city of Bergamo to an impoverished family. After showing some musical talent, he was enrolled in the town’s Lezioni Caritatevoli where he had the good fortune to study with Giovanni Simone Mayr, maestro di cappella at Santa Maria Maggiore. Originally from Bavaria, Mayr was a successful composer in Italy during the era preceding Rossini’s rise to fame, with dozens of operas to his credit. Though offered many prestigious appointments throughout Europe, Mayr remained loyal to his adopted community and greatly enhanced the local musical institutions. Donizetti arrived at a time when Mayr was writing his greatest operas, and his impression on the younger composer was pronounced. Throughout his life, Donizetti regarded him as a second father, though he would outlive his master by only three years.
When it came time, Donizetti furthered his education at the Accademia Filarmonica in Bologna (shadowing Rossini, who had once studied there). He had already penned several short operas before receiving his first commission in 1818 from the Teatro San Luca in Venice – this was Enrico di Borgogna to a libretto by Bartolomeo Merelli. (In later years, as impresario of La Scala, Merelli was instrumental in the beginnings of Verdi’s career.) Further works were produced in Venice, but Donizetti returned to Bergamo for a few years of relative inactivity. A letter of introduction from Mayr to poet Jacopo Ferretti led Donizetti to Rome, where in 1822 he would have his first unequivocal success, Zoraide di Grenata. His career was just getting started.
Later that year Donizetti settled in Naples and used it as a base for the next 16 years. He arrived just as Rossini was finishing his seven-year contract with the royal theaters. Like Rossini he had the ability to work at the increasingly rapid pace demanded by the Italian theater industry and was able to produce three to four operas a year for most of his life.
Many remain timeless gems. L’elisir d’amore (1832), La fille du régiment (1840) and Don Pasquale (1843) demonstrated his expert handling of lighter subjects. Lucrezia Borgia (1833), Gemma di Vergy (1834), Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), Maria de Rudenz (1838) and Maria Padilla (1841) displayed the composer’s mastery of the Italian melodrama fueled by impassioned and unrestrained literature of the Romantic period. His influence on Verdi cannot be underestimated.
Donizetti’s success in dealing with both comic and tragic settings was due in part to his own manic depressive personality. Well acquainted with personal misfortune, Donizetti lost in the span of eight years his mother, father, two infant sons, an infant daughter and Virginia Vasselli, his wife of seven years. He never truly recuperated after her death, locking the door to her room and refusing to utter her name again. His melancholia may have been induced by early symptoms of syphilis, which he contracted as a young man. It may have also been brought on by the responsibility he felt for harboring the disease that likely cost him his wife and children.
Donizetti made his Paris debut in 1835 with Marino Faliero at the Théâtre Italien and later premiered Les martyrs (1840) at the Paris Opéra. A French translation of Lucia made his name a household word, and in 1840 the composer captivated audiences with La favorite, which became hugely popular throughout Europe and North America. One of his very last works for the stage, Dom Sébastien (1843), was cast in the mold of French grand opéra and was extremely well-received.
The composer had hoped to assume Niccolò Zingarelli’s post as director of the Naples Conservatory, but when the 85-year-old composer died in 1837, Donizetti’s considerable musical contribution to the city was overlooked. Preference was given to a lesser composer, Saverio Mercadante, chiefly because he was a native Neapolitan. After his brief stint in Paris, Donizetti turned toward the Austrian state, where he became music director of the imperial theaters. Two of his final works had their premiere at Vienna’s principal venue, the Kärntnertortheater: Linda di Chamounix (1842) and Maria di Rohan (1843). After the success of Linda, he was appointed Composer to the Austrian Court, a position Mozart had held a half century before.
By 1845, symptoms of his illness had become incapacitating, and his erratic behavior could no longer be excused by overwork. With his family’s intervention Donizetti was placed in a French sanitarium at Ivry for 17 months, then transferred to a Paris apartment. There he was regularly visited by musicians and colleagues, including Verdi, but by this point he was paralyzed, disoriented and rarely spoke. In September 1847, friends arranged his return to Bergamo, where he passed his final days at the home of a wealthy patroness.
Let’s Play 20 Questions with Laurie Hatcher Merz!
What made you decide on a career in the arts? Love of music and a bit of naiveté regarding the challenges of a music career.- How long have you been working with opera? I became a core member in 2001 and subbed a few years before that.
- What do you think makes Minnesota Opera unique from other companies? From my view “inside the pit”, I see an energetic and positive-minded orchestra that really enjoys working together. Excellent players, with a dash of Minnesota Nice! Beyond my chair, I see a very creative and thriving company which is capturing the attention of opera lovers around the world with its productions. Top-notch stuff.
- What is your favorite Twin Cities destination? Any of the trails, in all seasons!
- If you were stuck on a deserted island and could only bring three things, what would they be? Too hard!
- What has been the most challenging piece you have worked on and why? Several years ago, MN Opera did Der Rosenkavalier, and I think every player would agree that performing that piece is like running a marathon. Page after page of incredible (and incredibly hard!) music. That was before they enlarged the Ordway pit and such a large orchestra made for some tight quarters.
- How has music changed your life? I’m happy. I think I have the greatest job in the world.
- If you had to choose a different field of work, what would you choose? When I was a kid, I wanted to be a train engineer or a teacher. This late in the game, the railroad career seems unlikely.
- What is your favorite thing about Minnesota? The seasons! I wouldn’t feel right living where I don’t have the rhythm of the seasons flowing around me.
- Is there any “haute” backstage gossip you would like to share from this or previous performances? When the first act of an opera is going to run longer that 1 ½ hours, most players think carefully about how many liquids they consume before heading into battle.
- What are your top three favorite operas? Turandot, Tosca (yea, I’m a sucker for Puccini) and Der Rosenkavalier. Only three? I forgot Mozart!
- Have you ever had hot dish, and if so what is your favorite variety? I grew up in Minnesota – I’ve had it all and like it. Especially the tater-tot variety.
- How do you eat your eggs? Not with pleasure. Scrambled, if I have to.
- What do you typically order when you go out for coffee? Coffee, black.
- Besides opera, do you have any other favorite genres of music? What are some of your favorite artists from that genre? When I go out to concerts, it’s rarely classical. Bluegrass, blues, folk, rock. We catch Davina & the Vagabonds locally, when we can.
- Name your top five favorite movies. The Shawshank Redemption, Sound of Music, Dirty Harry, Monty Python’s Holy Grail, and for sheer, classic stupidity, Caddyshack!
- Are you really as scandalous as they say you are? Who’s been talkin’??
- Where do you get your news? A good old-fashioned newspaper, every day.
- Do you have Twitter, a Facebook page or website fans can follow? Fans?! Facebook.
- Do you speak any languages besides English? What are they? Deutsch, naturlich!
- One a scale of 1-10, 10 high, how foxy is James Valenti? Geez, that’s kind of personal…
- What do you like to do when you aren’t busy creating great opera? I teach bassoon, have a reed-making business, and perform elsewhere in the area. When I’m not working, my family keeps me busy. We enjoy winter sports and go up north a lot in the summer. I also sit on the board as serve as VP of the local historical society. My husband and I come from early Minnesota pioneer families and find the history fascinating and worth preserving.
Black Hat Collective: Where opera and comics meet
Black Hat Collective: Where opera and comics meet
From Silent Night. Photo credit Kate Saturday
December 12, 2011
Opera and comics, not two things immediately linked by the brain. Yet, for the second year in a row, the Minnesota Opera opens their doors wide to an unusual set of folks, many of whom have semi-autobiographical cartoon alter egos. Through the Black Hat Collective, a comics creator club at the Geek Partnership Society, a Northeast Minneapolis nonprofit that provides programs by and for local geeks, 15 illustrators get an invite to the final dress rehearsals. With three upcoming operas left in the 2011-2012 season: Werther, Lucia Di Lammermoor, and Madame Butterfly, I caught up with three Black Hatters to get their perspective on the odd marriage of comic arts and opera.
In September 2010, Portland began Comic Artists Night @ the Opera, inspired by the webcomics cartoonist Mike Russell created after attending press nights for bloggers. Lee Blauersouth, the president of Black Hat Collective, struck upon an idea of doing something similar in the Twin Cities and pitched it to the Minnesota Opera. “In the first email that I sent out, I said, how about one under appreciated visual storytelling form help out another?” she says. Since the partnership began, the Black Hat Collective has hosted an open call for cartoonists with active blogs. The event caps out at 15 and fills fast.
Recent Minnesota transplant, Kate Saturday, of shadow puppet show Objects by Gertrude Stein featured at the Bryant-Lake Bowl, gained new perspective after attending: “Listening to opera in recordings is a vastly different experience from listening to opera in person. In person it’s transcendent, kind of magical.” This was her first opera, and as part of Comic Artists Night, she met the librettist and the composer of Silent Night. There is a definite charm in the thought of funky cartoonists at the opera, a Baroque art with roots in the aristocracy, and being able to connect it to their own aesthetic.
“I’m a counselor, Jeremiah spends a fair amount of time on farm work, Maria just got back from Teaching English in Korea, Kate does puppets, Tim works at a pizza place, Gerbil does copy editing for a legal firm. There’s something very comforting about knowing that people that do what you do, and live how you live, can do it many different ways,” Lee says. The Collective takes pride in coming from all across the board in numerous aspects of their lives: “When you’re part of a community that actively goes out of it’s way to be accepting of all walks, you’re going to get all walks,” Lee says.
The Black Hatters all had good things to say about the nerd community in the Twin Cities. “Convergence has the most active ASL translation, for example, of any convention in the country,” says Lisa Blauersouth, Lee’s wife and the author of Godseeker, the webcomic that Lee illustrates. Being welcoming in general is part of the mission of the Black Hat Collective. “It’s a really supportive and friendly environment, so if someone decides to change pronouns one day, I say, okay man, I got a shit memory, but boy, I’m gonna try for you,” Lee says. “We started out with a few people who were overtly queer, and anybody who wasn’t okay with it didn’t stick around because we weren’t going to make apologies for people we’re very fond of.”
A welcoming community is by definition, one that is easy to get involved in. “All the events are public events, like the Opera, we put up calls for everybody,” says Kate. The Minnesota comics scene is rich, home to both Neil Gaiman of Sandman and Bill Willingham of Fables as well as dozens of indie-artists who recently attended the Minneapolis Indie Xpo and tabled at the Soap Factory. Kate had the following tips for a comics outsider wanting to get involved: “Cartoonist Conspiracy has a good list of events on their page and a podcast called The Lutefisk Sushi Podcast. They also do what’s called a jam comic the first Thursday of the Month at Diamond’s Coffee House, which means they produce a 24-page comic, but everyone works on whatever part they want,” she said. And, of course, don’t forget to join the Black Hat Collective email mailing list for updates on the Minnesota Opera.
Charlotte = cake: “the dresses looked like you could eat them, and everyone wanted a piece of her”
Monday, February 13, 2012
A Night at the Opera: Werther
This post is unforgivably tardy. Better late than never, I suppose, and while my excuses are legitimate they are still excuses. For one thing, my scanner is an incredibly old, fussy thing that doesn’t always work with my new laptop. Perhaps it’s acting out of spite because I abandoned it for a year while I lived in Korea. Perhaps it isn’t super compatible with my Macbook. Perhaps it’s just old. Whatever the reason, even after attempting to restart the laptop and the scanner several times (which was my usual fix), I haven’t been able to get the scanner to talk to my laptop for a couple of weeks now.
How I Imagine My Electronic Devices Behave:
Laptop: I hate that scanner. It’s old and it smells funny and I don’t want to listen to it anymore.
Scanner: Eh? Did you say something, sonny? Where are my pants?
The other reason, a bit less legitimate, is that my sketches are terrible. In short: It was dark, I’m severely night-blind, and I should have brought opera glasses or binoculars or something. Noted for next time.
Though failing to capture the awesome visuals that this opera presented (the sets and costumes were wonderful, as far as I could tell, and the photos on some of my fellow blogger friends’ sites confirmed it), I am finally posting the sketchpad drawings, but please be patient and understanding of the fact that I had to take them with my webcam, so they’re not the best quality. Also, pardon the fingers. You can click on the images to make them bigger.
First of all, I loved all the kids. The way they lined up, the way they played in the park, the singing. Super adorable. Those costumes! Here is my attempted gestural sketch of the adorableness.
Now on to Werther and Charlotte. Their romance, at first, was very sweet. A sort of “love at first sight” kind of story. I’m a sucker for romance, even the tragic kind, so this appealed to me quite a bit. We had some hope that maybe, just maybe, things would work out for these two. I tried to capture some of the chemistry there, the lovely gesture of the way they walked down the staircase together, and Charlotte’s pretty party dress (I don’t think I got the design right at all, but as I mentioned, I had to guess a lot at what the blurs on stage were supposed to be).
I also sketched a bit of my favorite character in all of this, the younger sister (I think the oldest under Charlotte), Sophie. She totally had a thing for Werther, too, and she had a really cute hat with a ribbon on it. More like a bonnet, I guess? I couldn’t be sure, but the huge round shape of it caught my attention. She spends most of the show either mooning after Werther (I guess she likes the emo boys), or trying to cheer people up (both Charlotte and Werther are on the receiving end of her adorable chipperness). She also has a nice chat with Albert, Charlotte’s fiance.
And then things got weird and uncomfortable, and I gave up trying to strain my eyes. Werther grabbed Charlotte’s skirt and made her edge away nervously. Werther rolled around on the floor. HE MADE SOPHIE CRY. Everything got reduced to chibis, all the better to express the complicated feelings. So many FEELINGS!
And then I switched to marker because I couldn’t even see my pencil sketches while I was drawing them (dark room + book light = bright glare on paper = blind artist), and things got really silly. Charlotte was equated to cake (the dresses looked like you could eat them, and everyone wanted a piece of her). Albert’s consoling speech to Werther came off more as gloating and rubbing it in Werther’s face that he couldn’t have the cake Charlotte, and man, what a nice cake it was.
Captions: “Charlotte = Cake” “Man, it is so great to be married to Charlotte. I can only IMAGINE how much it sucks to be you…” “Yeah ok bro shut up.” “THIS CAKE IS SO DELICIOUS AND MOIST!”
I kind of stopped trying at all after that.
Captions: “Saddest Panda. 2nd Saddest Panda.” “Be happy!” “All the unshed tears fall back onto the soul, and the drops hammer away at a sad and weary heart.”
Most adorable suicide ever?
…What is wrong with me?
In conclusion, DO go see Werther, or any of the other fine productions at the MN Opera House. Better yet, go see all of them. Get some culture in your life. Listen to some amazingly talented performers sing about love and loss and regrets. It’s way cooler than going to see that new Twilight movie. You’ll thank me later.
-Maria
“Asking a musician about the favorite musician is like picking the favorite seed in the sunflower.”
An Interview with Roxana Constantinescu 
Where would you like to live?
My home now is my dream place. Vienna. (checked J)
What is your idea of earthly happiness?
I’d have to use lots of commas for this and still never be finished: to live the way I think and feel, to love and be surrounded by my dear ones, to travel, to be always surprised by new ideas, people, to enjoy my freedom, a glass of wine, great food and museums, shopping, new holidays destinations, spa days, sunny days, good movies, coffee chats with friends, Christmas tree decoration with family and all the simple or big things that bring a huge smile on my face. Plus, let’s not forget my hobby is my work. What can be better?!
Who are your favorite heroes of fiction?
Considering that I haven’t seen one movie with Batman, Spiderman, Superman, I’d say Zorro, Robin Hood, King Arthur, Sir Lancelot, Sherlock Holmes, Hamlet.
Who are your favorite heroines in real life?
My mother-for the way she deals with life, with us, and all the women who fight for their freedom, their love, their believes, who show strength and compassion.
Your favorite painter?
Caravaggio and Vermeer. Darkness and light. Can’t choose one over the other.
Your favorite musician?
Asking a musician about the favorite musician is like picking the favorite seed in the sunflower. Impossible. I start naming a few, in a couple of minutes I’ll be sorry for not mentioning others.
The quality you most admire in a man?
Sense of humor.
What is your present state of mind?
I need coffee; too early in the day; relaxed.
What is your motto?
Live with no regrets.
Do you have a website, Facebook fan page, or a Twitter for everyone to follow?
Just started a website: www.roxanaconstantinescu.com Not finished yet, but almost. Most important info is there.
Favorite behind-the-scenes memory…
You know, every time I live something funny, or different, on stage or off stage, I think: “Ohhh, I’ll remember that for ever!”…but then, the memories start being so many, that it’s hard to put your hand inside the story bag and just grab one. So the next little tale is what comes to my mind now, on Monday at 10:24 am, and it’s about my first meeting with Roberto Alagna.
Imagine the set: 10:55 am on the hallway of the Vienna State Opera. On stage, rehearsal starting in 5’ minutes. The opera: Faust. I am there ready for Siébel, last zip of coffee. Chatting with colleagues. And there he is, Alagna, in jeans, coat, etc. and with a huge white towel over his head, trying to dry, while walking, his long hair. He came straight from the shower (told us afterwards), living across the street. Woke up too late. He introduces himself to each of us, and when he hears my name (typical romanian last name), he starts chatting in the best romanian slang ever. The wife must have been a good teacher. I adored him on the spot. The End. : ))) (next story featuring Roberto Alagna: champagne soup J)
It’s fun to watch people misbehave so badly while singing loudly…
An Interview with Director Kevin Newbury
What do you regard as the lowest depth of misery?
Being trapped in an airport.
Where would you like to live?
On the ocean.
Your favorite painter?
Egon Schiele
Your favorite musician?
Madonna (sad, but true).
Your favorite virtue?
Generosity
Your favorite occupation?
Directing, of course.
What natural gift would you most like to possess?
Perfect memory
Do you have a website, Facebook fan page, or a Twitter for everyone to follow?
How long have you been involved with opera and what drew you to the art form? 12 years. It represents the best of all art-forms rolled into one. And it’s fun to watch people misbehave so badly while singing loudly 
Favorite behind-the-scenes memory…
When I was a senior in high-school, I was in a murder mystery play and we started doing the dialogue from Act Three in the middle of Act Two and we ended up revealing the killer before intermission. I think the set fell down, too.
“Talent from all over the world have come together to make the production of Werther possible at the Minnesota Opera.”
Review of Werther at the Minnesota Opera
Werther is an opera in four acts by Jules Massenet to a French libretto by Edouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann based on the German epistolary novel The Sorrows of Young Werther by Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe.
Talent from all over the world have come together to make the production of Werther possible at the Minnesota Opera.
James Valenti, who plays the title character of Werther, has a voice as impressive and as lovely as the beauty in nature that he sings about.
The dialogue — sang in French — is witty and entertaining in its melodramatic operatic phrasing with subtitles that read, “This is the day Gretchen promised us those lovely Cray fish.”
The opera opens with Werther inside his apartment. Newspapers tacked to the wall in disarray. Werther is laying the floor, obviously in despair.
Act 1 opens with the widowed bailiff teaching his young children a Christmas Carol in July. They stand in a picturesque scene of a backyard with an industrial backdrop with a black metal bridge and staircase the runs the length of the stage.
Act 2 opens with a humorous scene of drinking and cheering “Bacchus forever!” as an ode to Dionysus,Wine making and of ritual madness and ecstasy. Werther seems to spend the entire opera in an ode to the god of madness, as he begs for her in a depression that teeters on the verge of suicide if he cannot covet the object of his affection, Charlotte.
The first half is slow; stick around until the second half, and you’ll be glad that you did. The second half has a powerful opening with Werther standing on the bridge (more about that later) in a bright spotlight. The set is pitch black set. Hints of snowfall glow along the perimeter of the lights. The bridge moves back and a mesh screen lifts. Dramatic orchestration builds. Now the real show begins.
The melodrama moves into the realm of ridiculous in Act 3 when Werther holds onto Charlotte’s ankles, begging for her love. They wrestle on the floor in some combination of desperation, lust and anger.
Werther’s props are a mix-match of effective and distracting. For example, a mesh screen is lifted twice throughout the opera, like a fog lifting, revealing a more clear view of the actors. This prop is the best in the show.
A pair of industrial metal staircases connects to a bridge that moves forward and back on the stage. The prop is distracting in that the characters frequently climb up the stairs and descend down the stairs. The staircases are tall and winding, thus it takes a considerable amount of time to travel from the middle of the bridge down to the middle of the center stage. The prop becomes an annoyance when the scene becomes more about characters traveling on the staircase than about the plot and emotion in the scene.
Tickets are still available for the Feb. 2, 4 and 5, 2012 shows. To order, call the Minnesota Opera Ticket Office at 612-333-6669 Mon.-Fri., 9am-6pm.
Werther —or— A Dark Knight at the Opera
Last Thursday I went along with the Black Hat Collective to another preview at the Minnesota Opera. Our mission: To draw comics, enjoy the show, and have a fun time —then blog about it!
Tonight’s show:
Werther
Werther
Werther (Ver-tur) is an opera by 19th-century French composer Massenet (Massa-nay) based on an epistolary novel (a novel made out of mailed letters, like Dracula) by 18th-Century German author Goethe (Geuh-tuh).
The story is simple:
A gloomy man named Werther falls in love with a lady named Charlotte, but she’s already promised her dead mother that she’d marry a guy named Albert instead. Charlotte and Albert get married ten minutes in and then everybody cries for an hour. Then Werther shoots himself. The end.
Before I show you my cartoons or discuss the opera, I think you should know the back-story behind this play.
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| Romanticism |
Germany, 1774.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe wrote The Sorrows of Young Werther when he was 24. At the time, he had a mad crush on a woman named Charlotte Buff, and used his book to vent his emotions. Goethe had considered himself a member of the Sturm und Drang (Storm and Stress) movement, which would later form the basis of the Romantic movement, which deemed everything natural sublime and exalted the extremes of emotion —including angst and depression as well as joy.
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| Werther Fever |
When The Sorrows of Young Werther came out, it struck a chord with people everywhere and became super popular. We’re talking Twilight-popular. Goethe became a celebrity overnight and “Werther Fever” spread across Europe. Werthermania inspired young dudes to dress like Werther (early cosplayers), write satirical fanfiction (such as The Joys of Young Werther) and even to perform some of the earliest known copycat suicides! This was a committed fandom!
Later in life, Goethe would grow to hate Romanticism, calling it “all that is sick.” He wrote that, “If Werther had been a brother that I had killed, I could not have been more haunted by his vengeful ghost.” Though he also understood that every young person deserves to have an emo phase, saying, “It would be sad if a person didn’t have a time in his life when he felt as though Werther had been written exclusively for him.”
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| Science! |
After growing out of Romanticism, Goethe went on to become one of the great Humanist poets. He wrote works such as the epic 2-part Faust, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, and many stories, plays, and poems. He was also a painter and a scientist, and did lots of research into optics, biology and color theory, from which he invented the first symmetrical color wheel.
France, 1887.
100 years after Goethe gave it up, French composer Jules Massenet is still clinging onto Romanticism even as it’s falling out of fashion (its arch-nemesis, Realism, is much more in vogue). He was a big fan of talented Germans (he had a deep admiration for Wagner) and it was only natural that Massenet turn Werther, the flagship of Sturm und Drang, into an opera. At 45, Massenet had already made about 17 operas so it’s naturally pretty good music. He had some trouble getting it performed at first, and halfway through he decided to rewrite it for a baritone, rather than a tenor (the tenor version is still the most common). When it finally premiered in 1892, Massenet made bank.
Minnesota, United States, 2012.
120 years later, Thomas Boguszewski and sits in on a preview of Werther at the Minnesota Opera in Saint Paul. He draws some funny cartoons.
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| “This opera is about love..” |
The show opens up onto a tiny room with all the walls covered in papers (love letters, presumably).
—Now I know where Baz Luhrmann stole the opening scene for Moulin Rouge.
Soon the actual set appears and it’s pretty nice. It’s a slim, sparse set in front of a large photographic backdrop of Industrial-Revolution Germany. There are smokestacks rising above the horizon and heavy clouds. The gloomy grayscale of the backdrop is offset by the little island of color that Charlotte and her siblings inhabit.
In this opera, Werther is quite the Romantic philosopher. His first song is an ode to the glory of nature, then he sings a tribute to the innocence of children, then he sings about falling in love wit Charlotte because she takes such good care of her younger siblings.
(Ladies and gentlemen, if you want to get somebody to fall in love with you, learn to be good with kids.)
At first I just sat and sketched pictures of characters and scenes that I like.
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| Werther at Charlotte and Albert’s wedding. What a sad fella. |
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| Charlotte’s sister had a good costume and played the part of a kid well |
Werther met Charlotte and Albert in July, and by Christmas, he’s decided to kill himself over them.
Werther sends a letter to Albert asking to borrow some pistols, using a cover story of “I’m going out of town and need them for protection.”
Instead he takes the gun, wanders the streets, and prepares to kill himself while dramatic music plays.
This dramatic music made my day.
Because sitting in the opera, I was listening to THIS:
But all I could hear was THIS:
In the end, Werther locks himself in his room. He has taken all the letters down from his wall and thrown them into a pile in the corner. He has also scrawled “Liebe oder Tod” (Love or Death!) in huge script on the wall.
Werther sits in the corner with his pistol. Charlotte knows what he’s about to do and is coming to stop him, but she’ll never make it in time. Werther raises his gun, prepared to fire into his own chest.
Suddenly…
Now there’s a character WORTH cosplaying.