Wagner’s hellish sea crossing on stage

A bad ferry crossing nowadays results only in vitriolic lines posted, in tantrum, on Trip Advisor: “Just because people don’t have choice, they feel like they can do whatever they want. I am hoping next time they won’t charge me for the air I’m breathing as well!”:

“In the cabin – door hinges loose, toilet seat loose etc. I certainly do not want to be on this ship if something unexpected happens – no confidence at all”. That sort of thing. Bad breakfasts tend to come in for a lot of snash as well.

Then there’s; “This damned ship makes landfall only every seven years. And, there’s never a faithful woman onshore to free me of the ghostly crew when you want one. Any chance of a refund?”

For Wagner, the response to a dodgy sea crossing was to write an opera. Richard Wagner and his then wife, the troubled Minna, fled their creditors in Riga, Latvia, in July 1839, boarding the good ship Thetis, en route from Pilau, via Copenhagen to London. The voyage took a hellish three, storm-tossed weeks. Herr Wagner’s riposte to seaborne misery was not on Trip Adviser, but onstage, Der Fliegende Holländer, his opera based on the novel, Aus den memorien des Herren von Schnabelewopski (catchy), by Heinreich Heine.

Heine’s literary work is still the subject of considerable scholarly interest in Germany. An education forum dedicated to the novel – running since 2006 – still excites passions, leading to the moderator’s most recent, frustrated post:

Please take care of yourself and your loved ones! Get warned by the federal emergency information and news app – stay healthy!

But if you continue to spread panic here, you will be given a forced forum break!

Panic? Does this refer to Covid-19, or the imminent septennial return of Der Flieglende Holländer? Who can tell?

Herr Heine was a rebellious German Romantic, forced to live in France, largely because of censorship, who latterly added heavy doses of scepticism and irony to his work. Consider these lines:

A mistress stood by the sea
sighing long and anxiously.
She was so deeply stirred
By the setting sun                           This is the Romantic setup.

My Fräulein!, be gay,
This is an old play;
ahead of you it sets
And from behind it returns.           And this, the putdown.

Heine was intrigued by obsession. In Chapter 7 of the book, in sails the sea captain whose pact with the devil – for saving him while rounding a storm-tossed cape – doomed him to roam the seas forever in search of a faithful woman (Why? Who cares? That’s just the way it is.)

Denied even the solace of death, Wagner added to the poor sod’s misery the meme of emerging every seven years to seek the woman who would be faithful for ever, so releasing him from his curse of eternal, damned life.

Eventual release came with a terrible consequence, his death, and that of his beloved. This double tragedy became a Wagner riff. Not a great series of options, especially for the lucky gal. One imagines Herr Wagner, banged up in his cabin, longing for release at any cost. Heroes and heroines would pay the ultimate price.

This production by François Girard, the French-Canadian director who gave the Met it’s brilliant Parsifal in 2013, and set designer John Macfarlane, the Scottish artist who is probably the most painterly operatic set designer working today, is masterful. It is rooted in the legend, unadorned. The temptation to add too-clever-by-half modern allusions – like references to Trip Advisor – which have infantilised other recent productions, is resisted.

Good God! There is actually a ship, which hoves into sight, stage right, at the outset and dominates the action, withdrawing and returning occasionally. In the current Bayreuth Holländer there is no ship. The action takes place in an Amazon packing plant. The Dutchman is a cyborg, disfiguring metal intrusions down one side of his face and in the final scene the plant – originally dedicated to packing electric fans – has, opportunistically, been converted to packing Senta/Dutchman porcelain dancing figures. They hadn’t gone to hell after all. They had gone viral. This buggering about with the plot is common. In another production the action takes place on an airliner. Trivialising travesty.

At last, I sighed, a production that takes Wagner’s first successful opera seriously. It is an atmospheric triumph, thanks to slick lighting effects, the sharp focus on the central character, Senta, sung superbly by German soprano Anja Kampe, clad in crimson, and the enhancement of the Dutchman’s eerie persona by the addition of a shadow, provided by an offstage dancer mimicking his front stage actions.

The New York Times review complained about the drabness of the set. Sorry, that’s the point. This is a terrifying story and none of its brutal realism was blunted by camp distractions. The pallid greys, blues and ethereal greens all contrast starkly with Senta’s crimson presence.

An opening dance sequence choreographed by Carolyn Choa, during the overture, in which Senta Dancer was performed by Alison Clancy, was mesmerising. It set up Senta as a romantic, her internal torture of fatal fascination for the portrait of the Dutchman captured in sensuous movement.

I hadn’t read the programme. With old familiars I like to come to performances without preconceptions. (Probably self-justification for laziness.) So, it did strike me that Anja Kampe was, apart from being an acknowledged soprano, also a surprisingly skilled dancer. Not until the curtain call, when still crimson Senta Dancer took her bow first, then snuck back into the chorus, did I twig that there were two of them.

The Met proscenium is surrounded on top and both sides by a thick, gold, smooth bezel frame. M. Girard’s stroke of genius was to complete the picture-frame effect by adding a bezel to the stage. We were all in the picture. There was a real feeling of being drawn into the action. At curtain fall we had, immersed, become as obsessive as Senta.

However, the problem for Senta in this production was, she did not have much to be obsessed about. The Dutchman, sung by Russian bass-baritone Evgeny Nikitin, replacing an ankle-scuppered Bryn Terfel, was not as exciting as his portrait. Neither in voice – which ran out of puff towards the end – nor in action. Static and emotionless.

Having just heaved to after seven years and been promised Senta in marriage by her father, Daland, performed by German bass, Franz-Josef Selig, he might have shown a smidgin of dynamic emotion. He wasn’t even as exciting as Senta’s spurned boyfriend Erik, sung by Sergey Skorokhodov, an excellent Russian tenor, who debuted at the Met in the 2010 production of The Nose (Dmitri Shostakovich). Erik is cast as a loser-schmuck, but he outshone the Dutchman in the emotional stakes. Just didn’t work.

The Dutchman’s lacklustre character was underpinned by incomprehensible direction, which kept him apart from Senta during most of the action. Largely, he stood stage right, motionless, possibly so that his unfailing shadow had space to display on the curtain behind. Senta stood stage left. There was a gulf between them, even when they sang ensemble.

Surely, to have dramatic force the action in this opera must drive towards eliminating the gulf between Dutchman, the portrait and Dutchman, the man, not widen it? Half-way through I felt it would have made sense for Senta to tip the mournful loser back into the ocean and return to her fixation with the more interesting portrait. Even Erik!

The other major directional weakness was the portrayal of the relationship between Senta and boyfriend, Erik. She showed no emotion towards him at all. Why not? He is her long-standing lover. They are expected to marry. The whole point of the opera is the tearing of Senta from her earthly commitment to Erik, before succumbing to her other-worldly obsession with the idealised Dutchman in the picture. Strip that away and an essential piece of Wagner’s emotional jigsaw is lost.

Ms. Kampe is the second great find for the Met during this now truncated season. The other is soprano, Lise Davidsen, who sang Lisa in Tchaikovsky’s The Queen of Spades. Ms. Kampe has sung the Senta role with great success across Europe, winning acclaim for her thrilling singing.

Her acting commitment is fixating. M. Girard certainly gives her plenty to do, including some striking stage action during the crucial scene in Act II when Senta, intoxicated by the Dutchman’s portrait, sings her famous Ballad, recounting his harrowing legend while her disapproving, young women co-workers look on in alarm. The audience suddenly spots that the portrait has been transformed into the huge, unrelenting painted eye John Macfarlane had first presented on the pre-performance curtain.

David Portillo, the excellent Texan tenor, sang The Steersman. His interventions in the action are few, but crucial to the evolution of the plot. He injects a dose of earthly common sense into proceedings, but sadly the vaccine has not been fully developed and the victims snuff it despite him.

The Russian conductor Valery Gergiev was in the pit. At a behind the scenes orchestra rehearsal – not of Holländer – a week or two before I had overheard a couple of my fellow attendees describe him as “careless”. I have always rated him. But, careless the maestro turned out to be. The music in Holländer is sweeping, compelling, and often majestic. But Maestro Gergiev delivered a perfunctory performance. It seemed as though the players had come along for the ride. That was a wasted opportunity.

The final scene was superbly moving. The curse is lifted, but replaced by inevitable death, represented by a threatening, crimson-sky backdrop. There is a cold certainty that tragedy for Senta has been the price of her obsession, release the prize the Dutchman has ruthlessly won from her.

This was not the deeply moving message the finale got across to everyone. After the final curtain call, as I rose to depart, a couple behind me exchanged views in a Bronx twang; “Gee, Herbert, it’s not often we come here and see an opera with a happy ending”.

What? I could almost see M. Girard sucking his thumb and hopping up and down in the wings. Presumably, Herbert is seeking escape from Senta Herbert, even now heading back out to sea via the East River. He may be back in seven years. Hope he left a portrait.