WERTHER
Director - Kristīne Vītola
Based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's novel "The Sorrows of Young Werther".
"Just make sure [...] you don't fall in love." ("Nehmen Sie sich in acht, [...] daß Sie sich nicht verlieben").
Goethe wrote Werther when he was 24, under the influence of an unhappy love. At that time, devastated by love, he momentarily contemplated suicide and then transformed the idea into his first novel, The Sorrows of Young Werther, which in 1774 brought him his greatest popularity. Everybody read it, including the 17-year-old Napoleon Bonaparte, who made it his lifelong companion everywhere he went.
Goethe's Werther was the first herald of Romanticism and the Sturm und Drang movement in world literature, which also led the public to rediscover Shakespeare. Werther and many of the characters after him try to project their inner world into the world. The play is an attempt to express the inexpressible, to let go of feelings, to experience true love and, with it, possibly devastation. It is true: our hero's gradual disillusionment with reality in search of its authenticity is inevitable. That is the beauty of it.
Venue: the Small Stage, Lāčplēša Street 25.
Price: 30,00 EUR.
Premiere on September 24, 2024.
