Wagner’s début: the Royal Opera’s ‘Flying Dutchman’

Wagner’s Flying Dutchman is the first opera in his canon of ten mature works. He claims it was based on a novella by Heinrich Heine, but there is more to the story than that. The opera was informed by an appalling sea voyage to London he took with his first wife Minna to escape creditors. They were on a small ship with a crew of seven, and one contemporary recalls him later telling the story of “a ship [that] had suddenly appeared before them in a storm and vanished again in the depths of the night as rapidly as it had come”.

There we have a scene that conjures up the image of a ghost ship, a theme common at the time, to which Wagner added a redemption motif. His Dutchman sails the seas in a fast ship with a phantom crew, and can only put into port once every seven years. To be saved from this curse demands the love of a woman who will remain faithful until death. In the opera her name is Senta, daughter of a sea captain named Daland, and affianced to Eric. But she remains a dreamer, yearning to redeem the spectral captain who is condemned to sail the seas forever. In Tim Albery’s production for the Royal Opera, Senta is perpetually drawn to a model ship she has on stage.

The chorus were magnificent as they call to welcome the Dutchman’s crew towards the end. There is no response until, suffused with a greenish light, the ghostly crew make a very effective appearance from behind the space previously occupied by Daland’s men. This excellent production was made musically gripping under the baton of the Hungarian conductor Henrik Nánási, and the singers too were on top form. What luxury casting for the ROH to have Bryn Terfel as a charismatic and compelling Dutchman. Stephen Milling made a generous and noble Daland, always looking for the main chance, as the mysterious stranger produces gems for his daughter Senta. As a doting father he is happy to accept, and Swedish soprano Elisabet Strid as Senta produced huge power when needed.  Her fiancé Erik, Toby Spence was superb, impassioned and clear, and Miles Mykkanen made a beautifully voiced Steersman.

In the end Eric’s honest love is unrewarded, and the Dutchman has departed, believing she cannot redeem him since she has a previous lover. Yet in the final moments Senta sings, Hier steh’ ich treu Dir bis zum Tod. (“Here I stand true to you until death”), and expires. All in all a musical treat.

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