Germany Bayreuth Competition 2024 [2] – Wagner, Der fliegende Holländer: Soloists, Bayreuth Competition Refrain and Orchestra / Oksana Lyniv (conductor). Festspielhaus, Bayreuth, 1.8.2024. (MB)
Manufacturing:
Director, Set designs – Dmitri Tcherniakov
Costumes – Elena Zaytseva
Lighting – Gleb Filshtinsky
Dramaturgy – Tatiana Werestchagina
Refrain director – Eberhard Friedrich
Forged:
Daland – Georg Zeppenfeld
Senta – Elisabeth Teige
Erik – Eric Cutler
Mary – Nadine Weissmann
Steersman – Matthew Newlin
The Dutchman – Michael Volle
The Dutchman units sail each seven years, although extra usually on the Bayreuth Competition. Like all of Wagner’s operas and dramas staged there, The Flying Dutchman will run for a number of years, then take a couple of years off previous to a brand new staging. I first noticed Dmitri Tcherniakov’s manufacturing final 12 months (evaluate right here) and welcomed it with enthusiasm: a return to type for a director who had appeared at risk of falling right into a therapeutic rut. Regardless of a couple of, largely voiceless misgivings over Oksana Lyniv’s conducting, I put them to 1 facet, realizing what a problem it may be to conduct within the coated pit and attempting to stay open to approaches that might not essentially be mine. This 12 months, Tcherniakov’s staging continued to impress, although I couldn’t assist however really feel a little bit had been misplaced in tightness of presentation (or lack of Werkstatt growth within the meantime). The key drawback, although, was Lyniv’s route of the rating, loudly acclaimed by the viewers, but which for me fell critically quick, ensuing within the unusual, unwelcome achievement of creating Wagner’s rating sound incoherent, arbitrary, and for lengthy stretches – which, sadly, appeared even longer – merely uninteresting, largely glorious vocal performances however.
Again to Tcherniakov first, although. Right here ‘H’ – presumably ‘Holländer’, somebody to whom even hardline Line of Responsibility followers appear to not have given due consideration – returns to his hometown, as normal with Tcherniakov, brilliantly evoked scenically by his personal set designs. The horrific deeds he recollects from his childhood are performed out in the course of the Overture, a small-town closing ranks in opposition to his mom, maybe a prostitute or a minimum of in receipt of economic assist from Daland, resulting in her dying by hanging from a window. That is one thing, understandably, of which he can by no means let go; traumatised, he’s clearly bent on vengeance in opposition to Daland and household (which now contains Mary as his spouse), and extra broadly in opposition to your entire group. Whether or not his emotions for Senta are ‘actual’, no matter that may imply, or not, appears irrelevant. He clearly has his personal trajectory and she or he has hers, decided (as in so many stagings, as in Wagner) to flee a world of stifling conformity—and, in a way, does so.
But at what value? When the inevitable conflagration happens, maybe hinted at earlier by Mary’s putting of candles on the impeccably bourgeois dinner desk that proves solely a supply of distress and misunderstanding, the Dutchman, having shot others, is himself shot by Mary (as you’ll have gathered by now, a significantly prolonged half) to whom a now clearly traumatised Senta turns for consolation. The excess wealth our ever-venal Daland has achieved within the meantime has gone up actually in flames, leaving the ladies as soon as once more each to endure the implications and to try to choose up the items. Goals can readily flip into nightmares — though somebody seated close to me appeared, unaccountably in addition to distractingly, to seek out the entire thing a comedy, merrily chortling all through.
Michael Volle gave one other wonderful efficiency because the Dutchman. Each phrase counted, a minimum of as a lot as, arguably nonetheless extra so than, each observe. Although this was undoubtedly an opera efficiency, it drew on his deep expertise of lieder and different live performance singing. Furthermore, he dealt extraordinarily nicely with what I assume was a severe harm, showing with a crutch, although wielding it so nicely in the middle of his portrayal that I initially thought it should be a brand new function of the manufacturing. Solely when he retained it for curtain calls, was I moderately certain this was not the case (although I shall fortunately be corrected.)
Elisabeth Teige’s vocal energy, accuracy, and dramatic dedication have been second to none all through. Hers was a haunted, haunting portrayal that drew on a wide-ranging palette of vocal color while remaining completely centred all through. Nadine Weissmann as Mary as soon as once more impressed as a wonderful singing actor, while Georg Zeppenfeld confirmed for the nth time that he can apparently do no flawed in any position, together with one which requires unattractive traits of non-public weak spot. This was largely the identical forged as in 2023, the exceptions being Eric Cutler’s Erik and Matthew Newlin’s Steersman. Cutler actually made Erik into a personality of his personal; what a luxurious it was to listen to a heldentenor maintain his imploring personal on this position. Newlin likewise impressed significantly in his smaller position, clearly relishing the Festspielhaus acoustic and what he may accomplish, verbally and musically, inside it.
Lyniv’s conducting had its moments. It retained a way of urgency to start with, from final 12 months, although all too usually that dissipated right into a unusually meandering tour by the music. An inclination, already pronounced in 2023, to overemphasise the number-opera elements to the rating, as if ashamed of the seeds of one thing extra ‘progressive’, had now turn out to be an obvious dedication to make it sound as if it have been little greater than Das Liebesverbot. Sure, after all one can hear different roots within the rating; after all, highlighting them once in a while will be revealing. Maybe unsurprisingly, Erik benefited most from such emphasis, although it’s price recalling that the opera doesn’t fall so neatly into ‘backward-looking’ Erik and Daland, and ‘forward-looking’ Dutchman and Senta. Certainly, the best way wherein Cutler introduced that to the fore by gesture in addition to voice was not the least of his achievements.
But so heterogeneous an method required some sense of route, whereas what we heard, particularly within the second act, promised much less redemption than interminable day-to-day tedium. I can solely want I believed that to have been proof of a musicodramaturgical viewpoint. The third act fared higher, not least since issues with the refrain, or relatively with coordination between it and the orchestra, which Lyniv failed for too lengthy to deal with, had now been absolutely resolved. Even right here, although, an obvious dedication to rob the orchestra of its depth and, extra critically nonetheless, Wagner of harmonic that means recommended extra an abdication of musical dramaturgy than an alternate. I can solely assume the manufacturing’s use of Wagner’s post-Tristan ‘redemptive’ revisions to the rating was supposed to evoke irony; to an extent it did, extra on the shut than within the revised Overture. But it made little sense given such an method to the rating, aside from to recommend it was a little bit of a large number.
My sentiments, nevertheless, appeared to put me in a minority; I don’t assume I’ve heard a extra enthusiastic response to any efficiency at Bayreuth.
Mark Berry
