Search - Jules Massenet, Wladimir Jurowski, Vesselina Kasarova :: Massenet - Werther / Vargas · Kasarova · Trekel · Kotoski · Ch. Genz · Chiummo · Jurowski

This new recording of Massenet's Werther makes you glad that all these talents are on the opera scene but also leaves you wondering why they're all on this particular recording. Though French operas benefit from a light touch, this one about a precious young poet who falls hopelessly in love with a woman promised to another is a study in suicidal tendencies and thus must achieve a kind of dramatic force far different than its leading singers--both bel canto specialists--are used to delivering. So while there's no wrong reason to buy a recording by mezzo-soprano Vesselina Kasarova, one wishes she would've waited another five years for her voice to darken before singing Charlotte. In the title role, Ramon Vargas, isn't about to wait for his voice to grow into Werther: He pushes, sometimes hard, resulting in a stressed, vibrato-laden sound that would be more at home with the virile Cavaradossi in Tosca than with the more wistful poet of this opera. And neither sings French like a native. However, Christopher Schaldenbrand (Charlotte's husband Albert) is much more dramatically present than Thomas Hampson on the new EMI recording (though the latter recording as a whole remains the superior choice of these two new interpretations). And though the Deutsche Symphonie-Orchester Berlin sounds as though it needs to live with the score more, the up-and-coming Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski has a theatricality that suggests he's born for the world of opera. --David Patrick Stearns