Theatre Breakfast – An insight into the premiere of Werther: Word and MusicOpera — 20. February 2025.
The Theatre Breakfast, which will be an insight into the premiere of Jules Massenetꞌs opera Werther and will be held on February 27, 2025 at 10 a.m. in the Foyer of the Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, will welcome Dante Ferretti, triple Oscar-winning production designer and stage director and Pier Giorgio Morandi, conductor of the Metropolitan and honorary chief conductor of the Opera of the CNT in Zagreb. The Theatre Breakfast hosted by Zrinka Matić will open a series of interesting topics on the occasion of the upcoming large coproduction between the Zagreb Opera and Teatro Carlo Felice in Genova.
As the title of the event Word and Music suggests this Theatre Breakfast will focus on the influence of Goetheꞌs canonical novel on Massenetꞌs opera work and the connections between the two media will be analysed by Marijan Bobinac, PhD from the Department for German Language and Literature, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences in Zagreb, musicologist Trpimir Marasović and assistant stage director Fred Santambrogio.
The event will be complemented by the appearance of opera singers Emilia Rukavina and Pavel Valuzhin who will sing the popular arias of Werther and Charlotte and be accompanied on the piano by Hui Won Lee. Actor Marin Klišmanić will narrate a part from Goetheꞌs novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. Some topics that will be discussed are Ferrettiꞌs opera direction in the context of his film career and his creations of numerous sets for opera movies and performances. Along the literary and performative arts, Ferretti puts the opera work in correlation with film language that can be implemented because of the conversational style of the libretto itself. Conductor Pier Giorgio Morandi will speak of his approach to Werther, its musical stylistic aspects, orchestration and the challenges that appear when staging this work, as well as about Massenetꞌs influences on the younger generation of composers such as Puccini and Mascagni.
Word and Music, the main guiding principle of this encounter dedicated to the phenomenon of Werther will surface in the interpretations of the libretto and the novel, in the analysis of the Sturm und Drang movement and the stylistic direction of Romanticism in literature and opera.
