Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer (Caen, 2015)

Richard Wagner - Der fliegende Holländer

Théâtre de Caen, 2015

François-Xavier Roth, Alexander Schulin, Alfred Walker, Ingela Brimberg, Marcel Reijans, Maximilian Schmitt, Liang Li, Kismara Pëssati 

Culturebox - May 2017

It's not popular with a lot of people, but there can be good reasons for not staging an opera in realistic sets that are representative of the original setting. It doesn't have to be a deconstructive or post-modern analysis of the work either, sometimes it can be enough to merely place the work in a more abstract space where mood can be just as instructive to the piece as narrative. There's already narrative aplenty in Der fliegende Holländer, most of it related in long monologues by the principal characters, but there's a great deal of other characteristics in Wagner's opera that you can work with to great effect. The 2015 production at the Théâtre de Caen offers one such way of looking at it afresh.

Alexander Schulin's direction and Bettina Meyer's sets for the Théâtre de Caen's Der fliegende Holländer liberates what is after all a fairytale legend from its earth-bound, sea-rolling imagery in order to get closer to the Romantic heart of the tale. It might not follow the letter of the libretto in every respect, but alongside François-Xavier Roth's conducting of the Orchestre Les Siècles, there is an attempt here to capture something more important about the essence of dreams and desires, or dream-fuelled desires. Not deconstructive or psychoanalytical, this production unashamedly aims straight for the Romantic impulse at the heart of the work.

And it doesn't have to be suicidal about it either at the conclusion, because the implication seems to be that Senta is already dead at the start. We seem to be in the mind of the dead woman as Act I takes place in an abstract boxed-in space with geometric blocks topped with bands for light and projection. During the stormy overture, we do indeed see images of the drowned woman in the midst of the more familiar images of a raging sea and sky. A reanimated Senta calls the sailors to her command to be buffeted, spinning and whirling by the winds and rain of the coming storm. She also cradles a rather creepy gargoyle-like arm puppet of the Dutchman, whose lips can be made to move.

When the apparition of the Dutchman himself takes the stage, wonderfully atmospheric, dragging what looks like an oil slick behind him, it takes on another quality altogether with Senta is there on the stage with him, her romantic desires made real. Here, the Dutchman, intoning the nature of his entrapment, can be seen to have more of a Jokanaan-like quality to Senta's Salome-like obsessive and taboo desire. Senta is also there to direct negotiations between Donald (as Daland is known in the 1842 Paris version performed here) and the Dutchman, and immediately - in a way that might otherwise be lost - we gain a deeper insight into Senta's desires, and indeed the nature of desires, than we normally would from her first singing appearance in Act II alone.

The performance of the three-act Paris version of Der fliegende Holländer in a single flowing sequence plays well with this abstract dream quality, and permits some free-association of images that don't tie the work down in harsh reality. The sailors wives then might look like they are spinning the wheels of their sewing machines, but looking closer it looks more like they each are working with a screw-down vice. Darned (ho-halla-ho!) if I know what that means, but nothing feels distracting, the work flowing along according to its own dream-death logic. Senta's (dead) presence here, with her strange obsessions, her grotesque doll and ghost story feels just as out of time and place as it did in the first Act.

The abstract dream quality and the underlying desire that fuels it is supported wholeheartedly by the music and singing performances. Every one of the main roles impresses. Right from the outset the ringing clarity of Maximilian Schmitt's Helmsman and the soft resonance of Liang Li's wonderfully mercenary Donald have the presence to draw us into the haunting beauty of the compelling set-up for this production. Alfred Walker's Dutchman carries every ounce of the kind of dangerous charisma that has captivated Senta, his bass-baritone rich and dark, booming menace and anger that switches to a handsome romantic lyricism in Act II. The sincerity in Marcel Reijans' singing and characterisation of Georg (otherwise known as Erik) however makes him a worthy and sympathetic rival for Senta's hand.

This Senta however is completely in the thrall of the legend of the Dutchman, and the extent of that High Romantic obsession is very well brought out by the fact of her having already sacrificed herself to it before this production even begins. It's also fully characterised in this deeply romantic death-wish aspect by the performance of Ingela Brimberg. If that means that Senta doesn't meet the end that is usually reserved for her in the final moments of the opera, her final high notes nonetheless achieve exactly the same impact and bring to a climax the feverish mood that has been established in the previous three acts.

As good as the singing is, the nature of the mood is best captured by the musical performance of the Orchestre Les Siècles conducted by François-Xavier Roth. With perhaps not as big an orchestra that you usually find for Der fliegende Holländer, the character and detail of the playing was beautifully evident with a feeling for the mood that matched the production. There is more of a Classical feel to the performance that makes the work's influences and the spirit of Beethoven in it more apparent. There is also a wonderful consistency to the tone, with Donald and the Dutchman's duet in Act I not sticking out like a sore thumb as it often can, but feeling more of a piece with the work as a whole, permitting the production to also flow beautifully for all the inconsistencies introduced by its death-dream-logic setting.

Links: Culturebox, Théâtre de Caen

Cavalli - La Didone

Francesco Cavalli - La Didone

Théâtre de Caen, 2011

William Christie, Clément Herve-Léger, Anna Bonitatibus, Kresimir Spicer, Xavier Sabata, Maria Streijffert, Terry Wey, Katherine Watson, Tehila Nini Goldstein, Claire Debono, Joseph Cornwell, Victor Torres, Valerio Contaldo, Mariana Rewerski, Matthias Vidal, Francisco Javier Borda

Opus Arte

Depending on the work, depending on who is playing it and depending on how it is staged, Cavalli’s operas - some of the oldest works in existence - can struggle to hold the attention of a modern audience. They can be long, usually based on classical subjects, consist of long stretches of recitative accompanied principally on harpsichord and lyrone basso continuo with a limited range of period string instruments. There’s little in the works that lends itself to exciting staging in the way of, for example, the French regal entertainments of Lully and Campra, with all their ballet sequences and choral arrangements. There are no such difficulties with this particular work - one of Cavalli’s earliest operas first performed in 1641 - a version of the familiar story of the Fall of Troy and the love story of Dido and Aeneas, and with the production being in the hands of William Christie and his company, Les Arts Florissants, there are no concerns either about the musical interpretation of La Didone, which is staged with dramatic intensity by Clément Herve-Léger.

What makes La Didone rather more accessible than some works of early opera is the libretto by Giovanni Francesco Busenello, the librettist responsible for Monteverdi’s ground-breaking L’Incoronazione di Poppea, an opera that daringly put real characters onto the stage for the first time rather than the gods and heroes of ancient mythology. Even though La Didone is related to the mythological figures of Virgil’s epic Latin poem ‘The Aeneid‘, it benefits nonetheless from Busenello’s wonderful humanising of the characters and indeed the gods. The libretto isn’t made up of the usual vague pronouncements and declarations, but is dramatically and poetically expressive of the range of human emotions and passions that are brought out by this expansive work. In the first half - in the model followed by Berlioz in the now more familiar Les Troyens - the libretto captures the true horror and nature of the experience of war, the destruction of one’s country and with it one’s hopes and dreams. The second half also corresponds with Berlioz’s division, with Aeneas’ arrival in Carthage and with the trials that are brought by love and betrayal, expressed in a variety of ways, through Dido’s love for her dead husband, her rejection of Iarbas, and in her love for Aeneas’ that is curtailed by his sense of duty (to the gods) to abandon her and strike out for Italy.

This wonderfully rich story is brilliantly described in Busenello’s libretto, but if it truly achieves the same kind of expression of human passions that can be found in L’Incoronazione di Poppea, it’s also due to the musical compositions of Cavalli, himself a pupil of Monteverdi. William Christie directs this from the harpsichord and the rhythms and tone are clear, precise and dynamically attuned to the emotional content of the work, emphasising the horror with driving chords and accompanying the delicate laments and love-songs with heartfelt lyricism. Even without a synopsis (there isn’t a detailed one with this DVD/BD release unfortunately), it’s not difficult to follow what is going on thanks to the clear libretto where figures introduce themselves naturally, and due to the musical accompaniment that defines them. This is particularly strong in the tricky first Act, where in addition to gods directing the events, numerous figures wander around the dark ruins of Troy in despair, terrorised by marauding Greeks - Coroebus dying in the arms of Cassandra, Hecuba’s despair for the fate of the women, Aeneas’s wife Creusa murdered and returning as a ghostly figure. Appropriately then, it all looks and sounds like the Hades of Monteverdi’s L’Orfeo supplanted into the hell of a destroyed Troy.

Things actually become a little more confusing in the Carthage sections in this production with the doubling up of roles, when the same singer who played Aeneas’ dead wife Creusa in Act 1 (Tehila Nini Goldstein) turns up in Act 2 as Juno trying to destroy him. Even trickier, Cupid disguises himself as Aeneas’ son Ascanio in Act 2 to bring about the love between Aeneas and Dido, so although it makes for a convincing disguise when both Cupid and Ascanio are played by the same person (Terry Wey), it could be just a little confusing. (The chaptering, available as a pop-up on BD, will however clarify any other confusion over which characters are singing at any time). The fact that it works is down to the strong direction and staging working in perfect accordance with the music and the drama of the libretto. Clément Herve-Léger keeps the sets simple, employing only one or two large and effective symbolic gestures. It’s not period, but other than the inappropriate scaffolding for the down-to-earth gods and Venus lugging a suitcase for her journey to Carthage - an effort to humanise the appearances of the gods in line with the nature of the work and against the tradition of big fanfares and mechanical stage entrances - there are no distracting modern anachronisms.

With the simplicity of the staging and the sparseness of the orchestration, compared to conventional opera, much depends on the quality of the singing here. Populated extensively from Christie’s ‘Jardin des Voix‘ school for new young talent, the singing is exceptional right across the whole cast. Anna Bonitatibus is a clear, powerful and resonant Didone (Dido), and Kresimir Spicer a gentle lyrical Enea (Aeneas), both of them commanding and deeply expressive in the central roles, but the cast - clearly trained for this kind of singing - is made up of youthful voices filled with passion, clarity and a purity of tone that is well suited to early opera (some however - such as Francisco Javier Borda playing both Ilioneo and Mercury - try a little too hard). La Didone is still not without some longeurs for anyone unfamiliar with early opera, but this is certainly one of the more accessible works of this period, treated to a beautiful looking and fresh sounding production from Les Arts Florissants, that brings a much needed vitality to this rare 370 year-old work.

Opus Arte’s Blu-ray release comes with impressive specifications in terms of High Definition image and sound. The period instruments in particular have a wonderful clarity of tone within the natural reverb of the Caen theatre. It sounds a little bright and there’s no low-frequency range at all in the DTS HD-Master Audio 5.1 mix, but it’s distributed well emphasising the fragility of the delicate playing and the strength of the vocal expression. The PCM Stereo mix is also clear and true. The BD is dual-layer BD50, 1080i and all-region compatible, with subtitles in English, French and German only. There are no extra features other than a Cast Gallery and a booklet with an essay on the work which has a brief outline of the story, but there is no detailed synopsis.