Der Holländer – John Lundgren; Daland – Georg Zeppenfeld; Senta – Asmik Grigorian; Erik – Eric Cutler; Mary – Marina Prudenskaya; Der Steuermann – Attilio Glaser; Conductor – Oksana Lyniv; Director – Dmitri Tcherniakov; Sets – Dmitri Tcherniakov; Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
I had been planning to go to the ROHCG Peter Grimes, the ENO Cosi, and ETO’s Golden Cockerel in the W/B 14/3, but – stuff happens, and in my case I got Covid, so all these became ‘might have been’s – The Golden Cockerel is on all over the place but none fits in around other commitments I have, and, as far as Peter Grimes is concerned, I am seeing it in Munich in July. Oh well…. During my enforced house-bound 10 days the most enjoyable musical event I watched on my laptop was this, a video from the opening night of last year’s festival. The Parsifal Tcherniakov I’ve read about staged in Berlin sounds too wayward as a reading. From what I’ve heard, it would give some credibility to Roger Scruton’s claim that “…..Wagner’s dramas concern sacred things, and sacred things are intolerable to those who no longer believe in them: an urge to desecrate replaces the desire to worship and – just as in periods of religious iconoclasm, such as that which destroyed the interiors of our English churches – the finest and most beautiful symbols are torn down and trampled on, lest they retain their power over the human soul”. Well, of course, it would be possible to use that argument to insist that nothing about the staging of these works should have changed since Wagner’s time, which is obviously nonsense – in the case of the Dutchman this completely idiosyncratic account of the work made a lot of sense and produced some remarkably dramatic moments. The re-working of the story is essentially this: the Dutchman’s mother, a single woman, is having an affair with a younger Daland, who is married. He rejects her and as a result she commits suicide in front of her young son (all this is staged during the overture). Years later the son, now a grown man, comes back to the town for vengeance. In the meantime, Daland has married (might already have been married to) Mary, and their daughter is Senta. Senta falls for the Dutchman as in the ‘normal’ reading of the opera; their love duet takes place in the extension of Daland’s house with Daland and Mary sitting frozen at the table. Erik is a bit of a plonker as in the standard version. Eventually The Dutchman leaves and is shot while he does so by Mary – there seems to be some pity for her from Senta as the curtain falls. Not all of this makes sense at first view – and my German isn’t good enough to determine how relevant some of what was being sung was to what we were seeing on stage. But the reading seemed consistent and generated some extraordinarily effective acting and scenes.
The set was a foggy gloomy silhouetted North German town, in shades of grey, yellow and blue. The ‘shipwreck’ scene was set in a micro-detailed outside bar. The choir of seamstresses turned into a town choral society being rehearsed by Mary. Asmik Gregorian was quite outstanding as Senta – vocally thrilling, even reckless, and throwing herself into the role. The roar that greeted her curtain call must have been heard all over the town! John Lundgren was also first class dramatically as the Dutchman, though vocally a bit monochrome and not sufficiently varied. Georg Zeppenfeld was his normal first-class self as Daland. Oksana Lyniv made the orchestra blaze – a thrilling account of the score. Thoroughly recommended!!
John's musical journey 