Oy Vey: A Psychoanalytic Der fliegende Hollaender!

[Ralph]

Wagner would plotz!

*****

'Hollaender' takes liberties with Wagner
7/27/2005, 7:03 p.m. ET
By GEORGE JAHN
The Associated Press

BAYREUTH, Germany (AP) — The music came from Wagner at Wednesday's Bayreuth Festival production of "Der fliegende Hollaender" but the plot came from Freud.

Wagner's Senta, abused by her father, dreams up a fantasy lover — the flying Dutchman — who will whisk her away from her stifling bourgeois surroundings; she redeems the Dutchman from an eternal fate at sea by casting herself into the waves at the end of a stormy 2 1/2 hours — much of it on deck or on the yardarm. But not a glass of water was seen in Claus Guth's production, and the action was in the mind instead of the ocean.

Guth and set/costume designer Christian Schmidt placed the entire opera in Senta's house — the site of the sordid family secret. Then Guth injected the child version of the tragic heroine into the action. It's this Senta — a creation of Guth, not Wagner — who conjures up the Dutchman in a suppressed attempt to escape her father's clutches.

Other clues of the twisted father-daughter relationship abound in this production.

The Dutchman is a leaner version of Daland, Senta's father. There is the hint of abuse, with Daland partially lifting the skirts of Senta the child, before reading her a story. The choir of Norwegian sailors are Senta's marionettes that she pulls from her toy chest. Mary, Senta's governess, is blind. And more often than not, Senta turns to her father in her most passionate and despairing moments — not to the Dutchman, as called for by Wagner.

Most chillingly, Wagner's tale of redemption turns foul at Bayreuth.

As the Dutchman slips behind a red velvet curtain Senta follows, in what at first seems the symbolic equivalent of her deadly dash into the sea — the self-sacrifice that is supposed to bring salvation to both. But then the curtain lifts to show her up against the wall behind it, searching desperately — in vain — for the same way out taken by her dreamed-up paramour.

This is not Wagner for everyone. Most of the capacity audience at the Festspielhaus opera hall loudly booed both Guth and Schmidt at their curtain call. In contrast, prolonged bravos greeted the festival orchestra and conductor Marc Albrecht for producing the music that Wagner — and not Guth — had in mind.

At one of the Dutchman's 19th century rehearsals in Munich, conductor Franz Lachner grumbled about "the wind that blew out at you whenever you opened the score." There was plenty of that Wednesday — rousing brasses and rising and ebbing strings evoking the seascape, along with sensitively played woodwinds for Senta's theme and as underpinnings for the more poignant moments.

Those leery of experiments with Wagner would have been advised to leave after the overture — pure music that touched on all the later elements without the jarring visual pull on the senses this production presented.

Adrienne Dugger was a powerful Senta, her voice effortless and full register. Jukka Rasilainen's Dutchman was a perfect complement in the vocal category. Too bad, he couldn't be as spooky here as Wagner had him — after all, it's difficult to be Gothic in a double-breasted blazer.

Jaakko Ryhaenen's mellow and powerful bass was perfect for the role of Daland — supple enough to keep pace with Senta and the Dutchman in their ensemble pieces. Erik, Senta's hapless suitor, was played Endrik Wottrich, whose muscular and lyric tenor was a satisfying complement to the other, deeper main male roles.

And this time, the tenor didn't get the girl. That was the way Wagner wrote it — a reassuring constant in a production that otherwise took huge liberties.

[karlhenning]

And this time, the tenor didn't get the girl.

Hey! He stole my line! :-)

The Flying Dutchman might almost be subtitled Revenge of the Basses, since the tenor (Erik) loses the girl (Senta) to a brooding, mysterious bass (the Dutchman).