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                                           THE FLYING DUTCHMAN (Naxos 8.660572-73)

The legend of the Flying Dutchman, doomed to roam the world until redeemed by love, is universal. With the roles reversed, it gives us Siegfried and Odette/Odile in Tchaikovsky’s ballet Swan Lake, but it offers no salvation to Ahasuerus, the Wandering Jew who mocked Jesus dragging his cross on the way to his crucifixion. We even think of Janacek’s Makropolous Case, where the 337-year-old Emilia Marty longs to be allowed to die.

Abandoning the staples of comic opera and Meyerbeerian stifling spectacle, in Der Fliegende Hollander, the first work to hold its place in his operatic canon, Wagner set to exploring the intimacy of human longing and expectation, making the orchestra both a confiding partner and a voluble expression of personality. In this new, bargain-price recording, Jaap van Zweden makes his Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra virtually the star of the show.

The Dutch conductor already has a fine Ring cycle on the Naxos label from these forces under his belt, and he knows how to draw well-cushioned and bristling string playing, well-shaped woodwind solos and sturdy, noble brass from this complement. There is also an eloquent timpanist, rumbling with rolls, certainly, but also tapping out portentous mutterings.

Van Zweden whips up a tremendous storm, wind-machine making scary contributions, in the opera’s fabulous potpourri overture, which is like that of Meistersinger setting out the thematic stall and telling the story (my first encounter with the Dutchman overture was a televised performance under Georg Solti in the early 1960s, at a time when the BBC cared about classical music). Ironically it evokes the turbulence of the first movement of the Scottish Symphony by Mendelssohn, one of Wagner’s most despised composers, and interestingly, the opera was originally going to be set on the Scottish coast before shifting across the North Sea to Norway.

Ironically, too, Mendelssohn is one of the voices we hear in the musical language of the many set-pieces, along with Schumann, Weber, and Italian operatic composers anticipating Verdi. The journeyman (nice description) Wagner was still stumbling his way forward in Der Fliegende Hollander, and the content is the more absorbing for it.

Following the full orchestral score assiduously for the purpose of reviewing a CD recording channels the mind wonderfully, and throws up several questionable points. Among these is the stage direction for various people at various times to jump off and back on their ships; really, just like that? And, in the cold clear light of a study-lamp, the fact that the whole plot turns on the Dutchman’s eavesdropping misunderstanding of the relationship between Senta and Erik, a cliffhanger worthy of a routine soap-opera.

All that said, this performance throbs with colour and thrills. The small but telling role of the Steersman is one of Wagner’s most endearing, and Richard Trey Smagur sings it with the necessary vigour as well as a youthful lyricism. Ain Auger is a no-nonsense, blustering sea-captain Daland, but there are hidden nuances yet to come.

Van Zweden responds atmospherically to the Walkure-presaging gloom and menace of the conversation between Daland and the cursed Dutchman, to which role  Brian Mulligan brings a constantly communicative vocal line, heroic at the top, sorrowing and indeed doom-laden at the bottom. Auger’s Daland then adopts a Fagin-like, wheedling tone as he barters his daughter Senta for all the Dutchman’s spoils gathered over the decades. This is actually a morally unpleasant discourse.

Occasionally the recorded acoustic alters into something cavernous, and a chill is cast, so the swift transition into Act Two, Senta spinning with her companions, brings a welcome warmth and intimacy – until Senta launches into her ballad dedicated to the portrait of the doomed Dutchmasn hanging on the wall. Jennifer Holloway brings both fearfulness and compassion to her narration; just a pity that CD1 cuts off at such a strange point.

Senta’s nurse Mary (Maya Yahav Gour) clucks and fusses in the staple manner of such parts, but then comes the entry of Senta’s suitor, Erik the huntsman, Bryan Register’s delivery appropriately whingeing and stentorian. No wonder Senta is attracted to the glamour of an impossible ideal, and when the Dutchman does appear in her gold-digging (Alberich?) father’s house, Holloway joins with Mulligan in a far-reaching duet which has them eventually combining in cascading warmth with Senta’s pulsating B major ecstasy along the way.

The chorus of sailors and maidens opening Act 3 shows the vibrant quality of the Netherlands Radio Choir and the Hong Kong Philharmonic Chorus, but it is the excellent Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra, steered by Jaap van Zweden, which finally guides us into the haven of the salvation Senta’s self-sacrifice has brought to the Flying Dutchman.

Christopher Morley

ends

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