I doubt Goethe intended Werther’s sorrows to be as unremitting as this

There are some things the French do better than everyone else. Cheese, military defeats and extra-marital affairs are a given, but what about opera? English Touring Opera’s autumn tour sets out a tasting plate of the nation’s Romantic finest, hoping to persuade audiences that there’s more to France than just Carmen. Debussy’s delicate tragedy Pelléas et Mélisande sits between the fragrant melodies of Offenbach’s The Tales of Hoffmann and the Armagnac-soaked passions of Massenet’s Werther. It’s a typically wide-ranging programme from this small company, but one whose compromises inevitably equal its ambitions.

While the ambition is spread pretty evenly across the three works, the lion’s share of the compromise falls to Werther — Massenet’s heady adaptation of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. It’s a work that suffers from the classic epistolary-novel syndrome of too much emotion hanging off too little plot.