Wagner didn’t make this story up (unlike the stories of some of his operas) but it hadn’t yet developed into Pirates of the Caribbean. That version of the legend is here. The legend had been around since early 18th century, and boatmen took apparent sightings of the phantom ship seriously.
Wagner’s opera premiered in 1839, when he was only 26. He wrote the libretto himself (he called it a poem), as he would do with many future operas. Later he wrote that he had taken the story from Heinrich Heine's retelling of the legend in an 1833 satirical novel. Satirical? The irony was that the doomed sailor could only be redeemed by the love of a faithful woman. Wagner (perhaps typically) dispensed with the humour and wrote his version around that fate for a woman. [Spoiler alert!] Senta, our very strange and neurotic heroine, sold to the sailor by her father, must be faithful to him till her death.
This is the earliest Wagner opera most people know – and the earliest ever performed at Bayreuth. In an 1851 essay Wagner claimed it as his new start. "From here begins my career as poet, and my farewell to the mere concoctor of opera-texts."
The music tells the story
It has to be Wagner. The orchestra required is small, (no Wagner horns yet) but the characteristic leitmotifs hit you from the overture – there’s the ocean or storm motif and then one for the Dutchman and for Senta a longing, very memorable song.
Here’s Jesse Norman, as Senta as she tells the legend.
And here’s Nina Stemme – the lyrics are in English below the image.
Want context? Here’s the full libretto in English
These leitmotifs communicate everything an aria might tell us, only much more quickly. We hear them again and again throughout the opera, varied slightly each time, and the end result is that the whole work becomes a powerful musical poem about Senta and the Dutchman rather than a series of beautiful but disconnected arias. Wagner’s system of leitmotifs transforms music into a language for representing mythical archetypes. That’s why his operas resound, not just in your ears, but in your soul. More here.
The music also tells the terror of the ocean - celebrated in 2015 by a stunning local production from Victorian Opera, using Deakin University technology to take the audience there - in 3D. Here's a flat screen preview of that brilliant production. An image doesn't do it justice.
Senta now
It’s interesting to browse the Met Opera’s teaching notes prior to their production: "Senta of Attention: Making Sense of Der Fliegende Holländer’s Heroine".
Senta first appears in the opera as an offstage bargaining chip. Once she shows up for real, she has only one interest: the salvation of a man she has never met but whose portrait and story haunt her. And when she finally meets the Dutchman, she almost immediately sacrifices herself to save his soul. Yet while Senta’s obsession with the Dutchman and her all-encompassing dedication to his “redemption” (Wagner’s favorite concept) might make modern audiences raise their eyebrows, Senta also acts entirely autonomously and premeditatively: She has committed herself to the Dutchman long before she knows that he is a real person (let alone that her father has struck a deal to “sell” her to the mysterious sailor), and she takes her infamous leap off the Norwegian cliffs only after the Flying Dutchman offers to release her from her promise. So is Senta truly as naïve as Wagner claimed, or is she a powerful woman who makes up her own mind and catalyzes a spiritual transfiguration?
Sounds like Brünnhilde? We'll return to the Valkyrie later in the term.
Our production
We’re watching a 2013 performance of Der Fliegende Holländer, from Zurich Opera. Bryn Terfel stars as the Dutchman – his first recording of this role. Andreas Homoki directs. Matti Salminen – a living legend on the world's opera stages – is Daland, with Anja Kampe as Senta.
It's a pretty radical production.
"There’s scarcely a ship or a sailor to be seen in the wildly revisionist, weirdly anti-colonialist new production of Wagner’s “The Flying Dutchman” at the Zurich Opera. But, fortunately, there is Bryn Terfel… With the license that comes from the European fashion of radically reinterpreting standard works, [director] Homoki apparently decided to turn Wagner’s romantic ghost story into a cautionary tale about the evils of bourgeois greed and imperialism." Review in full here.
Radical yes, but the critics were impressed, especially by Terfel, "the great Wagnerian of today".
"The wonder of it is that Bryn Terfel's surely unsurpassable Dutchman, condemned to the seas for all eternity unless saved by the faithful-until-death love of a good woman, had other singers to match him."
Full Productions online
It's hard to find a production with a reality setting - or even a ship. But this is Wagner - in the absence of high end staging, the music may still be enough. A full production in concert - is available on YouTube, also featuring Bryn Terfel, with Senta sung by Rachel Nicholls. Here are the details of that Grange Park version on You Tube. Review here.
Thanks to Bernard, who comments: 'A slightly older Bryn, but the power in the voice is undiminished.'
Click links below for the Youtube of each act
Act 1: 57:40 mins
Act 2: 59:56 mins
Act 3: 32:46 mins
You just wanted the music? Go back in time, and you can listen to Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau in the audio of an amazing 2017 production from Staatsoper Berlin in full on Youtube here.
Cast: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau (The Dutchman), Gottlob Frick Daland (Norwegian sea captain), Fritz Wunderlich (Daland’s steersman), Marianne Schech (Senta, Daland’s daughter).
And finally, if you can figure the story from the music, (no subtitles) here's a live production that returns you to the sea and the storms, on real amazingly lit, tall ships. Filmed with an audience of 4,000 in Turku (hopefully in summer!) in 2015. Daland is played by Matti Salminen, who sings the role in our production - in his own country.
Lyn, 2/05/23
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