| "Based on Goethe's epoch-making 1774 novel, Werther was first performed in 1892 and its preoccupations are those of its time of composition rather than of the burgeoning romanticism of the late-18th century. The opera's dramaturgy is at times Ibsenesque. Like Ghosts, it deals with the catastrophic consequences of one woman's decision to abide by the proscriptions of bourgeois convention rather than forge an independent destiny."--from a review at guardian.co.uk by Tim Ashley dated July 3, 2003, of an Opera Holland Park, London, production. |
