Written by James Melo
Directed by Donald T. Sanders
Set & Costumes by Vanessa James
Lighting Design by Kate Bashore

June 3 & 4, 2015
Leonard Nimoy Thalia at Symphony Space
2537 Broadway at 95th Street
NY, NY

November 10, 2007
Florence Gould Hall
55 East 59th St.
NY, NY

2003
The Kosciuszko Foundation
15 E. 65th St. 
NY, NY

An original, fully staged theatrical concert interweaving drama with the music of Schumann, Schubert, Liszt, Brahms, Wolf, Mahler, and Pfitzner, based on Goethe’s tale of obsessive and unrequited love. 

Written feverishly in a white heat of autobiographical inspiration, The Sorrows of Young Werther turned the 24-year-old Goethe into one of the first international celebrities. Napoleon read the novel seven times and carried it with him during his Egyptian campaign and it started a “Werther Fever” throughout Europe, with young men dressing as the protagonist and committing copy-cat suicides.

Werther’s obsessive love of Charlotte emerges with great pathos in a haunting and romantic evening featuring Schumann’s magnificent song cycle Dichterliebe, one of the most compelling musical depictions of unrequited love, as well as songs for mezzo-soprano and two pianists mirroring the two main characters.