Werther: Irish National Opera’s production is a triumph of downsizing a classic opera for the road

Werther

An Grianán, Letterkenny

★★★★☆

This is full-blown, classic opera downsized for the road. Whatever else gets scaled back for touring, such as the orchestra and stage sets, the downsizing can’t include emotional impact. In this way, Irish National Opera’s Werther – composed by Jules Massenet in the late 1880s from a novel by Goethe – is a triumph.

Nothing contributes more to this success than the young central pairing of the Italian tenor Paride Cataldo, in the title role, and the Irish mezzo-soprano Niamh O’Sullivan as Charlotte. Even though it’s one of those operas you can reduce to a single sentence – two people fall in love, one of them attached to somebody else, and someone dies – Cataldo and O’Sullivan make you hang on their every word as they travel the road to catastrophe. As a result, when they eventually get there, they make your heart break a little, alongside Werther’s and Charlotte’s. I’m not even sure if there’s any above-average chemical connection between them. To me it seems more to do with the quality of their acting.

Paride Cataldo’s delivery is unmannered and seemingly effortless, the sound beautiful, including high notes that are genuinely thrilling

And their singing. Cataldo’s delivery is unmannered and seemingly effortless, the sound beautiful, including high notes that are genuinely thrilling. Each one crowns what feels like an organically narrative and emotional lead-in. Happy in act one, Werther is miserable for the rest of the opera, the ideal setting for a certain type of sobbing, self-indulgent tenor – not without admirers – that I usually find myself wishing someone could take behind the barn and put out of his misery. Not Cataldo’s Werther. The expression and credibility he achieves via vocal understatement pull you into the intimacy of both his exchanges with Charlotte and his reflections when alone. You find yourself invested.

Likewise O’Sullivan. We learn little about Charlotte in acts one and two other than that she is good and beautiful. And spoken for. But in act three, when Christmas Eve finds her alone rereading Werther’s letters, O’Sullivan somehow takes the bigness out of her big aria and, matching Cataldo, admits us to intimacy. She avoids display and exaggeration, revealing Charlotte’s conflicted heart through highly focused acting and the tender clarity of her voice.

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The production’s director, Sophie Motley, who oversees this achievement, also persuasively relocates the action to 1950s Ireland during rural electrification. Its set and costume designer, Sarah Bacon, uses abstract, corrugated sets and a selection of vintage electrical items to evoke what she calls rural Ireland’s “vernacular of tin roofs”. The skills and imagination of both women, and of the lighting designer Sarah Jane Shiels, combine powerfully in the intense closing scene when a cone of light encases Werther and Charlotte within the surrounding darkness, illuminating their final embrace amid falling snow.

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The conductor Philipp Pointer provides effective partnership although needing until the interval to establish consistent balance between the singers and the 12 instrumentalists who play Richard Peirson’s reduced version of Massenet’s orchestral score.

The small supporting cast is excellent, notably the soprano Sarah Shine, who nicely inhabits the contrasting and carefree light and innocence of Sophie, Charlotte’s sister.

Irish National Opera’s production of Werther tours until Sunday, May 14th, visiting Navan, Galway, Limerick, Dundalk, Ennis, Cork, Waterford, Kilkenny and Dún Laoghaire