Jules Massenet began thinking about making an opera from Goethe’s Die Leiden des jungen Werthers (1774; The Sorrows of Young Werther) as early as 1880, before he started work on Manon – though in his memoirs he claimed inspiration came in 1886 during a visit to Bayreuth to see Wagner’s Parsifal. He began the score in 1885 and finished it in 1887, but Werther’s premiere did not come until 1892, when the Vienna Hofoper requested another Massenet work after the success of the local premiere of Manon. It has been a permanent part of the international repertory since 1903. Werther and Manon have proved Massenet’s most enduringly popular works.
Live broadcast from the Royal Opera House will take place on 27 June at 20.00 at 15 Multikino cinemas: Bydgoszcz, Gdańsk, Gdynia, Katowice, Kraków, Lublin, Łódź (Silver Screen), Olsztyn, Poznań Stary Browar, Rzeszów, Szczecin, Warszawa Ursynów, Warszawa Złote Tarasy, Wrocław Pasaż Grunwaldzki, Zabrze.
