From The Enjoyment of Opera pp 45-47
No Fear of Flying
Wagner: Der Fliegende Holländer, Wales Millenium Centre, Cardiff, 22 February 2006.
Der Fliegende Holländer, or The Dutchman, as it is familiarly known to anglophone opera lovers, represents a turning-point in Wagner’s musical output and is therefore a work of considerable historical importance. Composed in 1843, between Rienzi (1842) and Tannhäuser (1845), it is the start of the transition from the Grand Opéra style of the former, a succession of musical numbers linking an evolving story, to Music Drama in which the music acts as a wrapper for the development of the plot, referring back to what has gone before and forward to what is to come. Both Rienzi and The Dutchman received their premiers in Dresden. As Ernest Newman remarks of the latter that, after Rienzi: the subject seemed a gloomy one to the good Dresdeners, nor did they realise that what they were expected to be interested in was not a stage spectacle but a problem in psychology.
On this occasion the opportunity was offered by the Oxford Friends of Welsh National Opera to travel by coach for a first visit to the magnificent Donald Gordon Theatre at the Wales Millenium Centre to see the new production of The Dutchman, directed by David Pountney and conducted by Carlo Rizzi with Bryn Terfel in the title role. Other parts included Gidon Saks as the sea captain, Daland, Annalena Persson as his daughter, Senta, and Ian Storey as her childhood sweetheart, Erik. Peter Wedd, remembered as Alfredo from WNO’s 2004 Traviata played the somnolent Steersman. The video artists were Jane and Louise Wilson.
It has to be said at once. The WNO made a serious misjudgement in engaging Pountney to direct this opera. I have said before that, in judging operatic productions, one has to ask: does it succeed with the help of or in spite of the direction? On this occasion it required the exceptionally strong musical and vocal performance to overcome the perversity of the staging. The set consisted of an overhead bridge and gantry, beneath which were a series of moving screens onto which various video images were projected. These ranged from blown-up close ups of the faces of the singers, through various background scenes (some of which resembled pages from an Ikea catalogue), to images of a derelict Soviet space centre (some with clear phallic intent.
Opera is not rocket science (as one says). It is a simple romantic tale of a young women haunted by the legend of the Flying Dutchman condemned to sail the seas unless he can find, on an occasional landfall, a loving woman faithful unto death in order to redeem his curse. When confronted with the reality, Senta, quite literally, leaps at the opportunity, by casting herself off a rock. As she falls to her death in the sea, the Dutchman’s ship founders with all aboard. (Except that on this occasion she vaguely descended a spiral staircase.) Thus Senta is the first in Wagner’s sequence of redemptively-challenged heroines. In Pountney’s apologia printed in the programme, he spins a metaphysical web of interpretation entirely of his own imagination, payng little attention to Wagner’s inspiration as expressed through the music and represented in the text. It is just not true that there is nothing else similar before Strauss’ Salome. There are no grounds for describing Senta as a spoilt obsessive teenager. Listen to her music, read her words. Wagner himself wrote in A Communication to My Friends in 1851 (and I quote from Newman again): It was the longing of the Flying Dutchman for the redeeming woman … the quintessence of womankind, and yet still the longed-for, the undreamed of, the infinitely womanly Woman, let me say it in one word, the Woman of the Future. (Poor Richard, little could he have guessed what was to come! And yet, as gossip columns and scandal sheets relate, the world is not entirely free of young women with redemptive ambitions.) This is romanticism not Freud.
The first of the three Acts (here given without intervals – as Wagner first envisaged the opera, giving musical and dramatic continuity) is devoted to establishing the characters of Daland and the Dutchman and their different attitudes to the sea. Daland expresses his relief at escape from danger but frustration in being forced to seek haven so close to home; the latter faces up to the probable futility of the latest stage in his endless search. They meet and almost immediately enter into a bargain for Senta’s hand in exchange for a treasure chest. Saks brought a most impressive voice to the part of Daland which grabbed the attention from the start and provided a perfect match to Terfel’s Dutchman who was in top form in his portrayal of the haunted captain. (For some reason the bargaining required a change of scene to a domestic setting away from the space centre, while singing of their proximity to the sea.) The second scene was more conventional, except that the girls spinning were dressed in Soviet-style uniforms while their threads provided a maypole. Persson made a charming, headstrong Senta (though no obsessive teenager). Many found a slightly harsh edge to her voice at low power (a characteristic, I am told, of would-be Birgit Nilssons) but at full power she produced a tremendously glorious sound. Yet her duet with Erik was sung with great delicacy by both singers. Storey gave a sensitive portrayal of the bewildered and jealous swain. The last Act was marred by a half-hearted orgy scene, supposed to represent the fond farewells of the girls to their embarking lovers.
The music of The Dutchman is a mixture of some very Italianate writing with some exciting Wagnerian sound, particularly in the outer Acts. As we expect, Rizzi gives tremendous bounce to the more Verdian passages, such as the duet between Senta and Erik, but the Germanic music lacked a little of the punch and precision which Jurowski got from this orchestra in Parsifal and in Wozzeck. As usual, the choruses, both men and women, excelled.
No Fear of Flying
Wagner: Der Fliegende Holländer, Wales Millenium Centre, Cardiff, 22 February 2006.
Der Fliegende Holländer, or The Dutchman, as it is familiarly known to anglophone opera lovers, represents a turning-point in Wagner’s musical output and is therefore a work of considerable historical importance. Composed in 1843, between Rienzi (1842) and Tannhäuser (1845), it is the start of the transition from the Grand Opéra style of the former, a succession of musical numbers linking an evolving story, to Music Drama in which the music acts as a wrapper for the development of the plot, referring back to what has gone before and forward to what is to come. Both Rienzi and The Dutchman received their premiers in Dresden. As Ernest Newman remarks of the latter that, after Rienzi: the subject seemed a gloomy one to the good Dresdeners, nor did they realise that what they were expected to be interested in was not a stage spectacle but a problem in psychology.
On this occasion the opportunity was offered by the Oxford Friends of Welsh National Opera to travel by coach for a first visit to the magnificent Donald Gordon Theatre at the Wales Millenium Centre to see the new production of The Dutchman, directed by David Pountney and conducted by Carlo Rizzi with Bryn Terfel in the title role. Other parts included Gidon Saks as the sea captain, Daland, Annalena Persson as his daughter, Senta, and Ian Storey as her childhood sweetheart, Erik. Peter Wedd, remembered as Alfredo from WNO’s 2004 Traviata played the somnolent Steersman. The video artists were Jane and Louise Wilson.
It has to be said at once. The WNO made a serious misjudgement in engaging Pountney to direct this opera. I have said before that, in judging operatic productions, one has to ask: does it succeed with the help of or in spite of the direction? On this occasion it required the exceptionally strong musical and vocal performance to overcome the perversity of the staging. The set consisted of an overhead bridge and gantry, beneath which were a series of moving screens onto which various video images were projected. These ranged from blown-up close ups of the faces of the singers, through various background scenes (some of which resembled pages from an Ikea catalogue), to images of a derelict Soviet space centre (some with clear phallic intent.
Opera is not rocket science (as one says). It is a simple romantic tale of a young women haunted by the legend of the Flying Dutchman condemned to sail the seas unless he can find, on an occasional landfall, a loving woman faithful unto death in order to redeem his curse. When confronted with the reality, Senta, quite literally, leaps at the opportunity, by casting herself off a rock. As she falls to her death in the sea, the Dutchman’s ship founders with all aboard. (Except that on this occasion she vaguely descended a spiral staircase.) Thus Senta is the first in Wagner’s sequence of redemptively-challenged heroines. In Pountney’s apologia printed in the programme, he spins a metaphysical web of interpretation entirely of his own imagination, payng little attention to Wagner’s inspiration as expressed through the music and represented in the text. It is just not true that there is nothing else similar before Strauss’ Salome. There are no grounds for describing Senta as a spoilt obsessive teenager. Listen to her music, read her words. Wagner himself wrote in A Communication to My Friends in 1851 (and I quote from Newman again): It was the longing of the Flying Dutchman for the redeeming woman … the quintessence of womankind, and yet still the longed-for, the undreamed of, the infinitely womanly Woman, let me say it in one word, the Woman of the Future. (Poor Richard, little could he have guessed what was to come! And yet, as gossip columns and scandal sheets relate, the world is not entirely free of young women with redemptive ambitions.) This is romanticism not Freud.
The first of the three Acts (here given without intervals – as Wagner first envisaged the opera, giving musical and dramatic continuity) is devoted to establishing the characters of Daland and the Dutchman and their different attitudes to the sea. Daland expresses his relief at escape from danger but frustration in being forced to seek haven so close to home; the latter faces up to the probable futility of the latest stage in his endless search. They meet and almost immediately enter into a bargain for Senta’s hand in exchange for a treasure chest. Saks brought a most impressive voice to the part of Daland which grabbed the attention from the start and provided a perfect match to Terfel’s Dutchman who was in top form in his portrayal of the haunted captain. (For some reason the bargaining required a change of scene to a domestic setting away from the space centre, while singing of their proximity to the sea.) The second scene was more conventional, except that the girls spinning were dressed in Soviet-style uniforms while their threads provided a maypole. Persson made a charming, headstrong Senta (though no obsessive teenager). Many found a slightly harsh edge to her voice at low power (a characteristic, I am told, of would-be Birgit Nilssons) but at full power she produced a tremendously glorious sound. Yet her duet with Erik was sung with great delicacy by both singers. Storey gave a sensitive portrayal of the bewildered and jealous swain. The last Act was marred by a half-hearted orgy scene, supposed to represent the fond farewells of the girls to their embarking lovers.
The music of The Dutchman is a mixture of some very Italianate writing with some exciting Wagnerian sound, particularly in the outer Acts. As we expect, Rizzi gives tremendous bounce to the more Verdian passages, such as the duet between Senta and Erik, but the Germanic music lacked a little of the punch and precision which Jurowski got from this orchestra in Parsifal and in Wozzeck. As usual, the choruses, both men and women, excelled.