Reviews 2010
Reviews 2010
✭✭✭✭✩
written by Richard Wagner, directed by Christopher Alden
Canadian Opera Company, Four Seasons Centre, Toronto
April 18-May 20, 2010
Musically, the COC’s revival of The Flying Dutchman is a triumph. Of the three times the company has staged Christopher Alden’s production of Wagner’s early opera, the current cast is the strongest. Alden’s direction is a mixture of deep insights and unhelpful peculiarities, but, in general, the few oddities do little to dampen the power of the experience.
The Dutchman of legend is cursed with immortality, condemned to sail the world forever and allowed to land only one day every seven years to seek salvation in the true love of a woman. In Wagner’s version the Dutchman (Evgeny Nikitin) has the good luck to meet the mercenary sea captain Daland (Mats Almgren), who is willing to marry his daughter Senta (Julie Makarov) to him in exchange for the Dutchman’s treasure. A second stroke of luck is that Senta has long been deeply obsessed with the story of the Dutchman and has always wished to save him.
We are thus in the world of dreams and the uncanny. Designer Allen Moyer captures this atmosphere in a box set tilted at steep angle to serve for all scenes on ship and on land. Anne Militello’s ever-changing lighting creates an aura of fantasy. Moyer’s costuming places the action in the 1920s and the makeup and movement of the actors are reminiscent of German Expressionist films such as Nosferatu and Metropolis. Indeed, Alden suggests that pointless journey of the Dutchman and his ghostly crew are a frightening reflection of the highly mechanized and dehumanized lives of the living.
Nikitin is hugely impressive as the Dutchman with dark yet gleaming bass baritone. Makarov has never sounded so powerful as Senta’s dream becomes reality fusing love and death. Almgren’s tone was strangely muddy, but Robert Künzli shone as Senta’s maddened would-be fiancé Erik as did Adam Luther as the Steersman. Unfortunately, Alden’s attempts to involve the Steersman more fully in the action only leads to confusion. Meanwhile, the COC chorus sings gloriously and the COC Orchestra glows white-hot under the tight control of Johannes Debus, who masterfully evokes Wagner’s storm-tossed world of natural, emotional and mental instability.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2010-04-29.
Photo: Julie Makarov. ©Michael Cooper.
2010-04-29
The Flying Dutchman