Music for Grown-Ups - 12/11/2009 : The Flying Dutchman in South Australia: what a treat!

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12/11/2009

The Flying Dutchman in South Australia: what a treat!

Thanks to Andrew Robertson in Adelaide:

Last night we were treated to the State Opera of South Australia’s production of Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, otherwise known as Der Fliegende Hollander. And what a treat it was!

I think I enjoyed this opera more than any other I’ve seen. The reason, I think, lay in the simplicity and purity of the story: essentially, redemption through love. But love on another level, love intersecting Fate. A sense of destiny, but importantly, the courage to surrender to it.

Perhaps I haven’t seen enough operas, but I usually find myself enjoying the music and the spectacle of opera, often despite storylines that seem trite and sometimes even incidental to the experience of the opera. Not so The Flying Dutchman. This was a morality tale that happened to be set to music and theatre.

Exactly why the Dutchman had been banished to purgatory was unclear, but every 7 years he had the opportunity of redemption – if only he could find a woman whose love was true. Strange that, in Wagner’s worldview, such women were few and far between – centuries had gone by and still our Dutchman was sailing, lost, in search of that true love.

Until he found Senta, who knew her fate, and resisted the worldly love proffered by Erik so that she could fulfil her destiny and release the Flying Dutchman – knowing that she too would be released from this world.

Simple but profound. And very beautifully staged, in a “less is more” production that had a minimalist set, using lighting and the costumes to create the drama.

Listening to a talk about the opera before it started was enlightening. Wagner developed the concept of Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total artwork” in which the music, singing, text, and dramatic elements are all equal parts of the whole.

The Flying Dutchman was said to be his first work that demonstrated this concept. And it was evident from the beginning – the orchestral opening sequence was a concert in its own right, not a prelude to the opera. Once again, the Adelaide Symphony Orchestra excelled.

A couple of years ago I was spellbound by Puccini’s Turandot, but last night’s opera was on another level. I wasn’t game to try Wagner’s Ring Cycle on the two occasions it has been staged in Adelaide in the past 10 years or so, but my appetite for Wagner has now been whetted, in case there’s a next time…

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