Life and death on the stage: What makes Werther a masterpiece ( The Royal Opera)

Joyce DiDonato, Vittorio Grigòlo, Antonio Pappano and other members of the cast and creative team reveal why they think Massenet s Werther is an operatic masterpiece. Find out more at Jules Massenet began thinking about making an opera from Goethes 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 Wagners Parsifal.