Wagner’s Der Fliegende Holländer
Metropolitan Opera
May 4, 2017
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The Flying Dutchman searches for a faithful wife
Photo credit: Met Opera |
Late last September, the 2016-2017 season at the Met opened with Wagner adrift
on the high northern seas with Mariusz Trelinski’s new production of Tristan und Isolde, and so it seems fitting that we virtually close the season with
another, earlier Wagner that also takes us indelibly out to sea for our next to
last Met voyage of the season. Staged for the first time in 1843, Der
Fliegende Holländer is the composer’s fourth operatic foray and it is,
thankfully, shorter than the Wagnerian fare we have grown accustomed to over
the last few years.
At roughly a continuous two and a half hours, without
intermission, it is decidedly more compact than his later classics, but that
doesn’t mean that the narrative is fast paced. Already at this point in his
career it took Wagner ages to get from point A to point B. Scenes unfold so
slowly that they demand the utmost extremes of endurance from everybody
involved (audience and performers alike). Though perhaps I’m beginning to think
that’s precisely the whole point with Wagner: he just harps on and on about
stuff without any theatrical sense of pacing or timing. Which is not to say
that the whole thing isn’t pleasurable. Gorgeous musical moments abound at
every turn, no matter how stalled out the story is and how flat – or should I
say, over-intellectualized – the emotions register. With Wagner it’s not about
compelling narratives but it’s really all about the musical journey, where
massive waves of wonderful sound engulf the audience and transport it away.
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The women do their spinning
Photo credit: Met Opera |
Having only just revisited Verdi’s Rigoletto (1851), an
opera from almost a decade later, in which the musical drama unfolds with an
economy and an emotional density that is completely and utterly lacking in
Wagner, Der Fliegende Holländer felt like some kind of strange overly
heady sprawling exercise. A ten-minute movement in Act II of Rigoletto
will not only thrust the dramatic tension forward with a riveting sense of
urgency and musical invention, but it will touch on half a dozen human
emotions, from anger to love, rage to supplication, tender affection to
exasperation, fatherly care and frustration to defeat and desperation. Wagner
on the other hand often abandons forward motion in favor of excavating personal
moments of introspection, maybe, to put it generously.
So this opera may be shorter than Die Meistersinger and Tannhäuser,
but it is by no means any sweeter. Quite the contrary: Der Fliegende
Holländer presents one of those questionable archetypal
mid-nineteenth-century self-sacrificing women that were in vogue across the
literary and operatic genres of the time. Dostoevsky’s novels often feature, at
the very least, one such specimen, if not more. Christlike female martyrs were
all the rage apparently in the era of male neediness two centuries ago, even if
the trend wasn’t limited to the period.
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The Flying Dutchman makes landfall
Photo credit: Met Opera |
In a nutshell: a wealthy Dutch sailor (the one after whom the
opera is named) is cursed to travel the high seas for all of eternity unless he
finds a good woman willing to marry him and remain faithful till death do them
part. Sailor can set foot ashore only every 7 years to find said “good woman.”
Sailor meets another boat where the captain promptly agrees to give him his
good daughter in marriage in exchange for some of his riches. It just happens
that the lady in question is already kind of obsessed with the story of this
very same Dutch sailor (apparently a major blockbuster at the time) and
daydreams of proving herself to be the special “good woman” required for his
redemption. When father introduces her to the hero himself, she swoons and
things seem to be heading toward a happy ending with a cheerful wedding in tow.
BUT, the young woman’s old boyfriend pops up all whiny because she does not
care for him anymore. Dutch sailor misunderstands the situation and storms off,
thinking she is just another slutty unfaithful woman, incapable of keeping her
word for more than a minute or two. Our heroine, to prove her eternal love,
jumps off a cliff, thus breaking the curse instantly. Curtain, as “good woman”
and Dutch sailor ascend united to heaven.
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Senta's Choice
Illustration by Robert Neubecker |
Much has been made of the choices of this particular opera’s
heroine, Senta. And much of the recent debate has focused on her role in the
story. She has been reduced to a mere fangirl who languishes under the weight
of her idolization of a pin-up of a corpse-like hunk who has been built up by
the ballad tradition passed down by popular culture, making her a female Don Quixote
of sorts who is drugged on her favorite stories and looks to them to give her
banal life some semblance of meaning. Or else emphasis has been placed on Senta’s savior complex – her
belief in her superwoman abilities to redeem an irredeemable and perhaps
unlovable man. We’ve all known the type, and so has the legendary Dan Savage.
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Senta goes into a fangirl trance over her pin-up of a hunk
Photo credit: Met Opera |
Putting Senta’s masochistic (or heroic, depending how you see it)
motives aside, it seems like most of this discussion has neglected some pretty
key misogynistic features central to the plot and its dramatic tensions. The
whole drama hinges on the fact that the Dutchman cannot find a faithful woman.
If there were women capable of loyalty in marriage or Senta did not raise
suspicions of infidelity, there would be no opera here. Which is offensive to
say the least. I mean, we’re talking about a sailor not able to find a loyal
woman.
Maybe Wagner’s personal experience with marriage (or married
women) had something to do with this. As one story goes, Wagner was apparently
having an affair with Liszt’s daughter, Cosima, who was married at the time to
Hans von Bulow, a pianist and conductor of the premieres of both Tristan and
Die Meistersinger. She bore Wagner three children (all named after
Wagnerian characters) before von Bulow granted her a divorce, at which point he
married Cosima and became Lizst’s son-in-law. The composer had a colored past
to say the least when it came to questions of fidelity. In this case the male
heart is not exactly exempt from guilt.
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Senta expresses her convictions to the headmistress
Photo credit: Met Opera |
The central question of feminine fidelity, however, is put forth
by Senta herself in her big second act ballad. It is perhaps the most famous
set piece in the whole opera, which undeniably features some of the most
beautiful music of the evening:
But he can be saved, this
captain so pale,
If woman’s heart in her mission not fail!
But when will he find this woman
So rare, this woman so rare?
(Act II, Scene 1, Senta’s Ballad)
By her own admission, or at least that of the author of the ballad
which she has learned by heart and sings in a trance at the opening of the act
while the other women, her boring conformist peers, are hard at work, women are
unfaithful (so as not to say “sluts”). A woman who will faithfully love “this
captain so pale” is a creature “so rare, so rare.”
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Senta assures the Dutchman she knows what she's getting into
Photo credit: Met Opera |
Now, either the Flying Dutchman is an unlovable monster (though
there are no explicit indications in the libretto of that), or else this opera
casts more doubts on the nature of womanhood than any opera before the Duca
ironically sang La donna è mobile (which said more about his own fickle
tendencies than those of any of his fawning fan girls).
Pray for the man at sea,
That his woman be true to him!
(Act II, Scene 1, Senta’s Ballad)
According to Senta’s ballad, women are not naturally prone to
loyalty. Is this not, rather, the theme of the opera?
Will you, indeed, give
yourself to me forever?
Shall I in truth, a stranger, thus be blessed?
Say, shall I find the time of sorrow ended –
In your true love my long-expected rest?
(Act II, Scene 3, Dutchman’s proposal)
In the world of Wagner’s opera, a good wife is indeed hard to
find. Senta goes so far as to prove her hardcore inner-fangirl status by
throwing herself off the cliff – all on behalf of a man whom she has only
(hardly) just met. They die a heroic death (together?). By proving her “faithfulness
unto death,” the Dutchman finally gets the repose he has long sought after. His
ship dissolves into mist; their souls rise up to the heavens – forever united
though with no real common bond of love to speak of. The composer didn’t bother
to develop any kind of relationship between them.
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A last encounter on the fatal staircase
Photo credit: Met Opera |
From our Family Circle seats we could not see the climactic
suicide, because it occurred too far upstage for our sight lines, nor could we
make much sense out of the sudden glow of heavenly light that rather awkwardly
suffused a rear corner of the stage. From the top of the house it was only
partially visible. Most of the people who filed out of their seats with us were
perplexed by the ending. What did it all mean? Did they die together? Did she
liberate him? Was her sacrifice for naught? Did redemption come to anyone after
all this sound and fury? The emotionally payoff didn’t amount to much.
The faithfulness of woman is at the center of the story. Not just
the self-sacrificing female savior, but one who will be eternally true to her
man, as if this were some impossible feat. Is that the offensive part? The
question hangs unanswered, heavy in the air. This production did little to
weigh in on the debate.
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Il maestro in action
Photo credit: Met Opera |
Nevertheless, the Met Orchestra sounded crisp and clean and clear
under the direction of Yannick Nézet-Séguin. Once they launched into an
inspired performance of the overture, I knew we were in good hands. In fact, I
can’t wait to see what kind mark he will make on the company. His conducting
was forceful and poetic, muscular and sure-footed. This embodiment of Wagner sounded
like it could actually forge boldly into those later Dionysian places his work
is so known for – especially in terms of the Met’s recent productions, that
have lacked the Dionysian indulgence so characteristic of this composer. A
Wagnerian score demands a kind of reckless abandon and energy. It has to be
expressive. None of this pussy-footing around that has characterized too much
of the current gentile world of the arts in which we seem to be eternally
damned to live. Nézet-Séguin seems poised to go there. And that makes me happy.
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A sorrowful, masculine presence, only slightly ghostly
Photo credit: Met Opera |
The cast was equally stellar on the whole. German baritone Michael
Volle as the Dutchman was mysterious and sexy, though only slightly
ghostly. He played the bereft sailor as a sorrowful, masculine presence. His
instrument has all the power and stamina required to forcefully assert itself
over the orchestra and fill the hall, with a manly desperation but also hope
and impetuousness that were pretty impressive. In Volle’s hands I think I may
consider warming up to Wagner. True, his arias went on and on about the same
stuff but he sounded so good that I actually did not mind that much.
Soprano Amber Wagner as Senta was also stellar – perhaps
the star turn of the evening. I feel like she stole the show in a number of
ways. She brought Senta’s famous ballad in the beginning of Act II to life with
emotion and musicality, launching with earnest passion into the excitement of
the hunky sailor story. She went into a fangirl trance with a delicacy tainted
with lunacy, especially in those forceful attacks that punctuate each of the
stanzas of the ballad. It is one of the most famous pieces from the opera for a
reason and this Californian soprano was up to the task. In fact, I never would
have said she was American. She has one of those Northern European voices that
stops you in your tracks no matter how big a wave of sound the orchestra might
be producing in the pit. She was another revelation of the evening.
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Amber Wagner steals the show
Photo credit: Met Opera |
Tenor A. J. Glueckert as the old boyfriend Erik was perhaps
the only weak link. He didn’t have the same girth of sound that the leads had.
The Wagnerian tenor though is a different kind of beast. There is just so
little finesse in the Wagnerian vocal line, whereas there is so much to belt
out, so much muscle required of the voice, especially the tenor. If you’re
looking for melting emotional moments, you’re in the wrong place. This is
decidedly a heady experience. The Wagnerian tenor knows no tears.
In fact, where is the emotional payoff? It seems to be
non-existent in the Wagnerian operatic experience. It’s all intellectualism all
the time when it’s Wagner night at the Met (even the audience seems to be more on
the haughty intellectual side when compared to your average Verdi public). I
have to admit that it has been a reluctant turn to the Wagnerian oeuvre but
once you actually take the plunge it ends up revealing itself to be pleasurable
in its own way (though one should not expect fast paced plots, witty librettos,
soul stirring moments or relatable human emotions). These works need to be
experienced at least once in the life of an opera lover. More than that is
pushing it.
– Lei & Lui
