Bryn Terfel made for the leading role
Senta is the heroine of this early Wagner opera and her sacrifice (more of that later) at the end looks absurdly melodramatic to a modern audience.
Why would she go to a certain death just to save a stranger cursed to sail the seas for eternity? ‘People just don’t do that kind of thing any more, if they ever did,’ we say.
Yet images of three young girls jetting off to who knows what rend our hearts. It seems our capacity to embrace the irrational is as strong as ever.
Bryn Terfel as the Dutchman has been honing this performance for decades. He is made for the role: dark, brooding, potent.
As far as Senta (Adrienne Pieczonka), the woman destined to save him from his eternal wanderings is concerned, it matters little that he has not got matinee idol looks – she is in love with the idea of the man and his torment.
Michael Levine’s dark, foreboding and minimal set is exactly right for an opera that would betray itself in trying to represent actual sailing ships. Ropes, a little water and the riveted plates of a sloping ship’s hull were enough. The model ship that replaced the painting of a stormy sea in Wagner’s original libretto was a jarring note, but we got the point.
Ed Lyon as the Steersman sang well and interacted convincingly with the excellent chorus. Peter Rose was a suitably venal Daland, and sang while battling the effects of a heavy cold.
The overall tone of the Flying Dutchman is remorselessly grim. The comic relief
Dark and brooding presence in a grim tale
of the girls’ machine shop camaraderie and the boys’ post voyage booze up, soon dissolve as the Dutchman’s theme returns in the orchestra and we get back to serious business.
I am not sure what director Tim Alberry intended with the ending. It seemed to me that Senta did not die and therefore she did not sacrifice herself. No melodrama, then, but the price is no resolution.
Does that mean that the Dutchman is still sailing the seas?