 Director Nebojša Bradić, the actual Serbian Minister of Culture, conductor Dorian Wilson, the mezzo Dragana Jugović Del Monaco, tenor Dejan Maksimović … to mention just some of the exceptional names, have brought us closer to one of the most beautiful and most tragic love stories in world literature showing that, whether we admit it or not, people still know how to love.
The first dress rehearsal. At the initiative of Dragana Jugović Del Monaco, who interprets Lotte, that "perfect creature" in whom the "female principle lives as pure as crystal" (Isidora Sekulić), with the deepest devotion, I sit in the semidarkness of the theatre and wait for the beginning of lyrical drama enshrouded in the thick fabric of Massenet’s music. I share the curiosity of the creative team: Will this idea – to stage in the 21st century a story written by "a young Goethe (…) so sincerely and innocently as, perhaps, he would never write again" and rendered in music by Jules Massenet, pained after visiting the house near Wetzlar where Goethe, "that world of man", was engrossed by (forbidden) love for Charlotte Buff – find a response among today’s public, which is not, as Nebojša Bradić notes, composed of "cantomen"?
"This opera can just as well be called Charlotte", says the director. "Massenet knew women very well and he knew women’s nature – this can be felt through music which we tried to read through a female sensibility as well as to find out who is Werther today. It is known that "Wertherism" is closer to today’s authorities views on literature and psychology than it was at the time that Goethe’s novel was written because, unfortunately, the theme of suicide is part of today’s world as well.
 Really, I once again feel Charlotte as the main character and after rehearsal I told this to Dragana Jugović Del Monaco.
"Nebojša", she said, "wanted Charlotte to be a strong, stable and firm woman as opposed to Werther, who is a poet, sentimental. Charlotte is deeply emotional, but in the first two acts she hides it very well – she fulfills her vow given to her mother. This piece is full of emotions … The music is so ethereal, so passionate … Werther is not often staged, but it gets under your skin … And it has perturbed us. Because there are few among us who haven’t experienced magic and suffering because of unrequited, impossible or forbidden love."
(Isidora Sekulić writes in the foreword to her translation of Goethe’s work: "Who hasn’t kissed some slips of papers, talked to pictures on the wall (…) What’s love if not romance? (…) All symbolic hours in life have so stirred us are romance. (…) Because, however much romance is weakness, romance is also devotion; man’s devotion as relates to emotion, weeping, passion and sacrifice; therefore, the most beautiful truth about man, the most beautiful truthabout ourselves.")
 "The music of this opera", says Mr. Bradić, "is romantic, lyrical and comical, but it also includes mysticism and a fatal feeling of things that characterises late Romanticism. This opera is closer to our time because it deals with the secrets of human nature, those interesting layers that one can find in one’s inner self.
Having read the French translations of work "suffered and written" by Goethe (1773/74) in his melancholic and dark early years, the novel’s hero was imitated in everything from fashion details to committing suicide in Goethe’s era. Massenet was "moved to tears when Werther and Charlotte parted". The opera was written in 1892 and is permeated with both the Goethean spirit of "Romanticism before splendid Jena" and Wagnerian on the theme of Tristan and Isolde.
How does today’s youth respond to Werther?
"To us the question of relations towards conventions is also important. Here we have a marriage convention and breaking with that convention – the question of free choice. In this the opera can be modern and accepted by some younger generations because what young people bring into question are just conventions."
"The issues of decision, frame, marriage – modern psychology. The time in which Massenet’s Werther appeared was a time of emancipation of women, Ibsen’s and Strindberg’s dramas – something that already speaks about modern psychology. This kind of literature is also present in this opera and in this it is interesting", says Mr. Bradić.
 The curtain goes up. The set design is by splendid Miodrag Tabački. The flowers are silver, like the Arctic landscape, and will be covered with snowflakes in the funeral procession in the beautiful entr’acte between the cathartic III and unraveling IV Acts – Bradić’s silent underlining of melancholy … Other-worldly versatile mise-en-scene combined with fin-de-siecle costumes by Bojana Nikitović, designed as if all the actors were going not to the Christmas ball referred to in the libretto but to Renoir’s impressionist Bal au Moulin de la Galette …
The vocal interpretations are by an exclusively domestic ensemble: "We have three parallel casts. It is good for the Belgrade Opera that a new project is being realised by this theatre. I allowed everyone full freedom of expression and it enriched the production with ideas. Dejan Maksimović interprets Werther as a modern young man with offended vanity and Janko Sinadinović interprets him more painfully, more Romantic", says the director.
Bradić’s insistence on acting, on mise-en-scene, his directing without pretentious cuts into the essence of opera expression and, naturally, the full devotion shown by the interpreters – all together subtly spans epochs: modern and classic!"
 Dejan Maksimović who candidly admits that he sings at all rehearsals with his his full voice full focused on the character of Werther: "Many say that in my private life I sometimes react hot-temperedly and at moments waveringly. My Werther is my alter ego – a man who is at some moments ready to go up to the summit and then again into a total abyss… I feel that energy which I guess I’ll manage to transmit through this role."
American conductor Dorian Wilson (b.1964) is one of the last students of Leonard Bernstein. He has conducted more than 50 productions in many opera houses and has more than 350 opera performances behind him. In the break between two acts he says: "To finally be in this National Theatre and take part in the complete production is a great pleasure. I have found many friends in Belgrade who are very dear to me, and that means a lot. To work with Mr. Bradić is a great pleasure as well. How he was only directing the scene! For me it was very exciting. I am very happy."
Dragana Jugović Del Monaco moves superiorly through the light-dark, restrained-passionate, piano-forte, the soprano-mezzo mosaic of Lotte’s demanding role.
"All great mezzo-soprano parts are enlivened in my character and my voice, and I have no unfulfilled wishes. However, now with Charlotte I suffered a lot, I lived through memories … But she also offered me a lot. Werther is something new on the current repertory: a French opera with an intimate plot is for genuine connoisseurs and I believe that it will have a public."
Dragana Jugović Del Monaco had her debut in 1988 as Rosina in The Barber of Seville: in 1998 she entered the National Theatre. The premiere of Werther in October 2008 marks her 20th anniversary on the opera scene and her deserved choice to be free to sing whatever she wants to sing for her own pleasure. | 
