If the director’s staging jettisons the narrative’s maritime elements, Tcherniakov’s clever character course proves so compelling that he finally retains the work’s riveting elemental nature. Whereas his therapy of Wagner’s redemption-through-love motif takes an surprising flip, the continuity of Tcherniakov’s storytelling and the fascinating questions it poses to the viewers solidify this as one of the excellent productions of Der Fliegende Höllander in latest reminiscence.
Tcherniakov and his dramaturge Tatiana Werestchagina portrays the Höllander as a deeply disturbed particular person scarred by childhood trauma. Because the curtain rises to the overture, he levels the character “H’s” backstory to inspire the revenge arc he would later traverse towards his society. The curtain rises to disclose a lady and a baby strolling the streets of an enthralling Nordic city, its sterile, monochromatic aesthetic and its residents’ equally homogeneous coloration palette (expertly coordinated by costume designer Elena Zaytseva) evoking the unsettling Calvinistic ambiance of Michael Haneke’s The White Ribbon.
The kid observes his mom coming into an affair with an older man who would later be revealed as Daland. After a quick time lapse, Daland is noticed rejecting H’s mom and throwing her on the bottom. The city’s residents cruelly ostracize the girl who was refused entry by a church the place she tried to take refuge. H tragically witnesses his mom’s suicide by way of hanging, clutching her physique because the overture attracts to an in depth.
Act I ensues after an much more vital time lapse, and H is now revealed as an grownup lurking by the doorway of a bar frequented by Daland and the city’s males. H slowly edges in the direction of the group and takes his place on the finish of an elongated communal desk, providing presents of tobacco and alcohol to the barflies. When the Steuermann slips right into a drunken slumber, H regales the gang with the paranormal backstory of his nice monologue—the character’s calculating crafty and his vengeful intentions masterfully drawn out by Tomasz Konieczny to enhance Tcherniakov’s studying of the character.
Diverging from the libretto’s emphasis on the supernatural, H’s enigma unfolds by way of a Nordic Noir-esque prism that explores his masterplan and the deep psychological scars that inspire his reemergence. Most significantly, the story unfolds as a social inquiry into the ethical codes and the hypocrisy that underpin this neighborhood, and the way these societal traumas mirror into and corrupt the main characters’ trajectories. Finally, H’s plans are set into movement when, enticed by the promise of untold riches, Daland agrees on arranging H and Senta’s marriage.
Tcherniakov engages the opera’s second act with even higher inventive liberties that contribute to his storytelling’s distinctive angle. Instead of the libretto’s spinning routine, Tcherniakov levels the congregation of the townswomen as a choral rehearsal led by Mary, elevated on this manufacturing to the function of Daland’s life associate and doubtlessly, Senta’s mom. Amid the sartorial unanimity of olives, beiges, and varied earthtones, Senta instantly stands out, her yellow coat and her scorching pink highlights marking her as one thing of a rebellious freethinker.
However Senta’s non-conformist streak transcends the superficial in Tcherniakov’s therapy, and with this distinctive portrayal aligns her extra carefully with Wagner’s preferrred of the “girl of the longer term”—the Ortrud and Isolde archetypes that may outline his later heroines. In her mockery of Mary’s conducting of the spinning music, she conveys a thinly veiled critique of the mundanity of her milieu’s chosen life-style. By callously dismissing Erik’s romantic overtures, she affords a transparent rejection of her society’s expectations of marriage and domesticity. Most crucially, Senta’s defiant demeanor throughout her singing of the ballad expresses her want to attain impartial womanhood as a substitute of the libretto’s idealization of romantic love.
When Senta and H lastly meet in Daland’s eating room, a palpable unease permeates the ambiance. Somewhat than depicting Senta as instantly enraptured by the stranger throughout their hypnotic duet “Wie aus der Ferne…,” the manufacturing distinctly conveys her preliminary apprehension in the direction of the Dutchman’s mesmerizing aura earlier than succumbing to his charms—maybe reflecting her vacillation between her want for true independence and her subservience to a wedding orchestrated by her avaricious father.
The Dutchman’s sincerity too is named into query—does H genuinely imagine that Senta represents his path to redemption, or is he conning her in his pursuit of vengeance? All through dinner, Mary seems visibly unsettled by the stranger as he fixes his gaze upon her daughter. Conscious of Daland’s previous infidelities and the pervasive hypocrisy that plagues their city’s tradition, maybe Mary fears that Senta too is destined to endure the identical destiny of disillusionment and entrapment that she herself has endured.
Tcherniakov skillfully unifies his story’s numerous threads into the finale when H lastly unleashes his revenge upon the city. As Act III begins, H joins his crew of blue-suited, thuggish henchmen as they indiscriminately slaughter the townsfolk and set the buildings on hearth. Witnessing the carnage, Senta finds herself incapable of reconciling H’s psychologically twisted nature along with her dedication to escaping her neighborhood by way of marriage.
In desperation, Senta makes an attempt to achieve H and proclaim her constancy, just for the Dutchman to rebuff her advances and throw her onto the ground—mirroring Daland’s actions to his mom through the prologue. When the rating reaches the climactic second upon which Senta hurls herself off a cliff, Mary emerges and shoots the Dutchman within the again, redeeming her daughter from H’s lure of cyclical trauma. Earlier than the curtain closes, the shellshocked Senta experiences a fleeting second of hysterical laughter earlier than lastly comforting Mary in an embrace.
On this manufacturing, Tcherniakov’s outsiders should confront their grievances towards their neighborhood of their path to private liberation. Each characters accomplish this to various levels—the Dutchman exacts his revenge towards the townsfolk, whereas Senta by way of H briefly glimpses her risk of escape from her suffocating small-town existence. Nonetheless, the Dutchman’s unresolved childhood trauma finally traps him inside a self-perpetuating cycle of violence, his second of triumph minimize quick when Mary ends his life.
Senta, although herself experiencing trauma by bearing witness to the Dutchman’s brutal murders, is finally granted redemption and true liberation by way of Mary’s intervention. As this story concludes, Senta finds herself standing at a crossroads, emancipated from the devastation of her hometown and the warped future that consumed the Dutchman. Whereas her destiny stays unsure, Senta finally turns into an impartial girl free of constraints in Tcherniakov’s compelling retelling of the Dutchman’s story.
Tcherniakov’s clever course was complemented by a forged of singing actors eager to match his exacting imaginative and prescient of the work. Tomasz Konieczny, who sang the function each in New York and Chicago final 12 months and substituted for an indisposed Michael Volle through the efficiency of August 8, was merely riveting and authoritative in his vengeful presentation of the Dutchman. If he yields to Volle in tonal refulgence and Lied-like finesse, Konieczny’s sturdy and steely timbre suited the presentation of H as a determine haunted by his psychological scars. Elemental in his narration of his backstory, crafty and seductive in persuading Daland and his household, and deeply disturbing by the opera’s finish, Konieczny adeptly match this manufacturing’s manipulative and felony personification.
Elisabeth Teige’s insouciant teenage Senta proved a extra congenial match for her soprano than Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, capturing the complete palette of emotion required of Tcherniakov’s strategy to her character. Teige’s plummy instrument impresses along with her assured ascents to her highly effective excessive register, however sometimes her longer phrases revealed her vocal method’s inconsistent breath assist. Georg Zeppenfeld’s musicianship and inimitable verbal fluency had been balms to the ears, his phrase portray illustrating Daland’s unattractive traits and his private weaknesses.
If Nadine Weissman’s earthy contralto has barely diminished in its lustrous qualities, she was a persistently nuanced and delicate actress who capably drew consideration to Mary’s extra outsized half on this staging. Eric Cutler, who additionally sang alongside Konieczny in 2023, dramatically made his lovelorn namesake character his personal. His youthful heldentenor was persistently safe, targeted, and ardent all through the character’s difficultly written set items. Matthew Newlin, who performed smaller roles in Tristan and Parsifal through the 2024 pageant, projected a lovely lyric tenor that rang sweetly inside the acoustic of the Festspielhaus.
Oksana Lyniv’s pressing course of the Bayreuth Competition Orchestra thrilled for its evocation of the music’s surging soundscapes, her pacing swift and fluid, her sense of the drama attuned to her singers’ interpretations. Of their navigation of the rating, Lyniv and her musicians underlined the story’s turbulent nature and the desolation that underpins the Dutchman’s existence. Nonetheless, this dynamism typically compromised the rating’s richly textured bass line, creating unusual balances with the brass part that left numerous moments skinny in tonal weight, and at occasions leading to scrappy wind execution. Regardless of these minor reservations, Bayreuth’s robust musical ensemble and Tcherniakov’s workforce created participating theater in a manufacturing that may undoubtedly depart its mark on Competition historical past.
Photographs (that includes Volle): Enrico Nawrath
