Without backdrop, without anything but a suggestion of costume and set, without orchestra and no special lighting, Seattle Opera’s Young Artists Program has achieved a riveting production of Massenet’s Werther. After five performances around the state this month, the young singers came to Nordstrom Recital Hall for their final show Saturday night. (Sadly, if missed it, you now have to wait until March for the program’s next outing.)
The production has been abridged so that it only takes two hours with one intermission. It’s been well done, and condenses the story, making it stronger, to my mind. Goethe intended his late-18th-century tale to take a cynical view of an extraordinarily self-centered young man gone overboard with his inappropriate passion.
More than a century later, Massenet took the popular tale and wrote his opera, an overload of physical chastity combined with bursting romantic tension spiraling downwards to disaster. Lugubrious as the story is, Massenet’s music is gorgeous, played here by guest pianist/coach Stephanie Rhodes on stage. Rhodes became the whole orchestra, doing an excellent job and supporting the singers.
Five of the Young Artists took part, with the title role taken by tenor Andrew Stenson returning for his second year with the program. The opera might have been chosen for him and for mezzo soprano Sarah Larsen as his unattainable love, Charlotte. The two have the lion’s share of the singing and carry the action between them.
Stenson, although his voice is quite different, reminds the listener of another young artist here who has gone on to a stellar career, Lawrence Brownlee. Not everyone is suited to French opera, but Stenson’s voice is ideal for this role. It is strong from top to bottom, perfectly pitched, no breaks between registers–in short a beautifully trained lyric tenor voice with gorgeous timbre. He is also able to inhabit the role and even elicit some sympathy, not easy since this is an unforgiving role to act—it’s hard not to get exasperated with Werther as he mopes around and disrupts Charlotte’s family, who all seem to love him nevertheless.
Larsen also has a beautiful voice, her middle and lower registers particularly rich. She too has a difficult role to put across, the chaste, gentle woman doing her duty and concealing a love for this importunate young man, and she acts it well.
Stage director Peter Kazaras has done a stellar job in directing this with so little by way of props to help him and getting get the story across. While both acts are good, the second is completely absorbing from the start and builds to the climax. Massenet milks the emotion for all it is worth in the long-drawn-out death scene, and the two singers command the attention throughout.
Of the other roles, bass Michael Uloth has only a cameo role but it’s enough to make one want to hear more of him. He has the lead in the YAP’s spring production of Don Pasquale. Baritone David Krohn, another returnee, has the role of Charlotte’s long-suffering husband Albert. He sounded better last year as Don Giovanni and this opera may just not suit him particularly. Soprano Amanda Opuszynski, as Charlotte’s little sister, gave an excellent portrayal of a young teen, good in every detail, though she sounded better as one of the gypsies in the mainstage production of Carmen earlier this fall than she did here.
Nordstrom Recital Hall is not kind to high tones at volume, where the sound often becomes hard and shrill. There is little reverberation to soften anything. Violins always suffer here, and it seems likely that the quality of Opuszynski’s voice, the highest, was undermined by these acoustics. Larsen also, in her highest register, had the same problem.
The singers, who spend twenty-one weeks in the Young Artists Program, get training in every aspect of being an opera singer, from everything to do with performance to life skills and budgeting. They are halfway through this course, and you will be able to see their progress at the production of Donizetti’s comic Don Pasquale, the end of March and in early April at Meany Hall.