In a letter to Franz Liszt in 1852, Wagner stressed that in his Der fliegende Holländer should be shown as realistically as possible, full of violent waves. One hundred and sixty years later, Yannick Nézet-Séguin takes that advice very much to heart in port city Rotterdam. Nothing about this Holländer ripples, from the first notes it storms, culminating in a third act at hurricane force, with a leading role for the Netherlands Opera choir.
For this performance, which after its premiere in De Doelen could only be seen in Dortmund and Paris, Australian video artist Shaun Gladwell made a real film, but as ferocious as it is in the orchestra, the images projected on the backdrop are tame, in which we indeed see the sea, surfers and the fire that is always inevitable for video artists in combination with water.
Before the start, Gladwell entered the stage and explained that you couldn't watch his film either, and that was indeed for the best. "What a fashionable nonsense, the image of a rippling water over a sea of sound roughly churning out the auditorium," tweeted one visitor rightly. Whereas the images Bill Viola presented at Tristan und Isolde made, seen in Rotterdam in 2007, enhance the act, they add nothing here.
Der fliegende Holländer is a transitional opera. On the one hand, it is a traditional opera, clearly influenced by Von Weber and Bellini, with clearly recognisable numbers and a plot that was certainly easy for Wagner to follow; on the other hand, this opera marks the transition to a distinctly individual style. Wagner composed most of the opera before the age of 30, but continued to work on the score even after its world premiere in 1843. For instance, he lightened the orchestration in many places and added the so-called 'transfiguration lock' or 'Tristan lock' at the end of the opera in 1860 as the most important. However, the composer was not yet truly satisfied, and he talked about further revisions with some regularity until the end of his life, without, except for some relatively minor adjustments in 1864, putting his money where his mouth was.
The myth of the Flying Dutchman was and is as popular as ever - many adaptations can be found before Wagner's opera, and to this day the ghost ship and its cursed crew turn up just as easily in Pirates of the Caribbean as SpongeBob SquarePants. In short, the Dutchman and his ship are doomed to sail the seven seas forever. Once every seven years, the Dutchman may go ashore to be freed from the curse by a woman who remains faithful to him until death.
In Wagner's opera, the girl Senta is obsessed with this myth. When her father Daland actually meets this Dutchman after a heavy storm, he immediately promises her hand in exchange for great wealth. It does not come to a marriage, however, because when hunter Erik reminds her of her love for him, the Dutchman releases Senta from her promise and wants to board the ship again, another seven years of wandering aimlessly ahead. Senta, however, confirms her loyalty and throws herself into the sea as ultimate proof, after which, in the 1860s version, both lovers rise from the sea, presumably towards heaven.
Nézet-Séguin wields the 1860 lock, but lets the Rotterdam Philharmonic blaze as if the rough 1843 version were on the desks. The in-demand conductor is energetic as ever, visibly enjoying the storm he unleashes but - and this is clever - never letting it derail. The choir of the Netherlands Opera, which performed the opera as recently as 2010, has little trouble with this, for the soloists it is a different story.
Fortunately, they are all very experienced, even in even bigger halls, but tenor Frank van Aken's lyrical sides in particular do not come across as well this way. Evgeny Nikitin in the title role suffers less from the muscle-bound display and soprano Emma Vetter turns out to be a true tornado herself, without losing any of her dramatic eloquence, on the contrary: in the extremely complicated trio with which the opera concludes, she remains intelligible.
Measuring up to Hartmut Haenchen as Wagner conductor, who will be in Amsterdam this month Siegfried conducts, Nézet-Séguin cannot yet, for that his Holländer the finesse, but this performance makes it abundantly clear that Nézet-Séguin is also developing stormily as an opera conductor.
Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer. Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra, choir of De Nederlandse Opera and soloists conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin with video by Shaun Gladwell, De Doelen, Rotterdam, 15 September 2013
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