Few mariners would deny the possibility of Sisyphean ghost ships, forever sailing through tempest and tumult. Richard Wagner’s fantastical 1843 opera “The Flying Dutchman” finds drama in the possibility of a return to port for the titular Netherlander. If The Dutchman, cursed to find land only every seven years, can coax the love of a true and faithful woman, the curse will be lifted.
Dramatically speaking, then, that gives any director of this perennially fascinating German opera two main options: Emphasize the redemptive power of love, albeit within a patriarchal context, or the soul-crushing cost of the curse.
It’s fair to say that director Christopher Alden’s expressionistic production, now docked at the Lyric Opera with the Polish bass-baritone Tomasz Konieczny in the title role, is filled almost entirely with the latter.
The milieu here, as designed by Allen Moyer and lit by Anne Militello, suggests a world of lost souls, trapped on or under a huge, tilted box, bombarded not so much by the waters (as Wagner once was himself, inspiring this opera), but by their own depressive states. Lyric has produced the opera without an intermission, as a then-young Wagner intended in a shot across the bow of form. That’s thematically apt: curses are relentless.
Konieczny, a formidable performer reaching deep into his gut, imbues his singing with the sense of dread that matches Alden’s conceit. He comes across as a man, if the nameless Dutchman can be said to be human, who has sailed so long he has ceased to believe. The performance is hardly optimistic about the quest that structures the opera. On the contrary, Senta (Tamara Wilson), the woman who finds this man and his associated proposition attractive, is getting involved with a profoundly damaged wreck. Then again, you could argue this has not been a good deal for her since 1843.
The huge vocal performance by the American soprano raised around these parts first suggests that all hope has not been abandoned here. But this is singing very much au fait with the show’s conceit: Wilson, consistently compelling but also unnerving, sings as if Senta were tugged by a string from the underworld. You don’t ever believe she will offer salvation through gentle love; she is playing out her role in the curse, fighting vocally with her own humanity and ending up on the losing side.
The Finnish bass Mika Kares, who sings the role of Daland, a sea captain and Senta’s dad, has the same sense of dread — as if he knew the end of this story from the beginning. Those two fine voices certainly contrast most strikingly, but they’re of a psychological piece.
So is Erik (the fine tenor Robert Watson), who sings without the belief he has much of a chance against these forces. He is like a piece of dried-up cod tossed in a Nordic harbor. And his flailings are something to hear.
All of that works together for an intense operatic experience and, as an inveterate audience gazer, I noted how some of the faces around me seemed to fix themselves for several minutes in versions of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream,” which I took as a popular endorsement, at least by Wagner fans who see the composer’s celebrated leitmotifs as existential blueprints for persons with little control over their fate.
Does conductor Enrique Mazzola and his orchestra match this Wagnerian storm? Not always; I sometimes felt they were struggling to keep up with the ships of souls, not commanding them or tossing them around or even revealing the depth of the churn. It’s tricky; the production is far more interested in a state of mind and therefore some degree of stasis is perhaps inevitable. No one here is saving anybody. Here we have a fully realized musical picture of the limitations of humanity, writ large in the ensembles of sailors and lost souls, their revels pathetic in their inability to effect any kind of real change.
Is Alden saying something here about Wagner’s views and what happened in Germany about 100 years after this opera was written? Something about how history teaches us we typically bob on the waters until it’s too late to save those at risk? Certainly, it’s clear that Wagernian intent is just a part of a weighty Lyric cruise to Hadestown and back.
Ships have been getting bigger and bigger all these years. So have their sunk costs. And turn radiuses.
Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.
Review: “The Flying Dutchman” (3.5 stars)
When: Through Oct. 7
Where: Lyric Opera of Chicago, 20 N. Wacker Drive
Running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Tickets: $52-$339 at 312-827-5600 and www.lyricopera.org
