On Saturday afternoon, I went to the Met Opera for the last time this season to see a performance of Wagner's early opera, Der fliegende Holländer. This marked the first occasion I'd had to hear the new Music Director Yannick Nézet-Séguin on the Met podium since having attended a performance of Verdi's Otello in 2015.
Like many of Wagner's opera, Holländer had a convoluted history. The composer came up with the idea while living in dire poverty in Paris after having fled his numerous creditors in Latvia where he had been employed as conductor of the Riga Court Theater. Part of his flight had been by ship to London during unusually bad weather and the horrific crossing no doubt provided some of the inspiration for this story of a ship's captain doomed to endlessly sail the seas until saved by the love of a woman. A more immediate source was a satirical novel by the German poet Heinrich Heine that provided most of the incidents Wagner incorporated into his libretto. The major difference between the two works was in tone. While Heine's story was written largely tongue in cheek, Wagner's treatment was deadly serious.
Wagner's 1839 flight to Paris was hardly a success. Even though he was at the time relatively unknown, he had hoped to convince the management of the Paris Opéra to stage his historical drama Rienzi, written in the grand opera style of Meyerbeer. But this plan came to nothing. To make matters worse, the composer was unable to find employment as a conductor. He did manage to sell to the Opéra the outline of Holländer's plot, but this was of little practical use and he was soon thrown into debtors' prison. It was not until he returned to Germany three years later that he was able to stage both operas in Dresden, Rienzi in 1842 and Holländer in 1843.
Despite the problems Wagner faced in composing Holländer, it proved to be a turning point in his career and until 2013 was the earliest of his operas to be shown at Bayreuth. Its success is not really so surprising. It is a compact drama, especially in the original one-act version shown this season at the Met, and in its Romantic emphasis on salvation through love anticipates the later Wagnerian operas, most notably Tristan. The music, if still a bit uneven at times, is already recognizably in Wagner's distinctive style and at times foreshadows that of the Ring. One can hear this immediately in the horn calls that open the overture and even more so in the conclusion where the stormy theme gives way to one much gentler and more life affirming. (In this regard, it's worth remembering, however, that Wagner did not add harps to the orchestration of Holländer's final scene until 1860, so the resemblance may have been deliberately retrospective.) The main problem with Holländer is that it is so static. There is very little action in this work. Instead, a good part of it is given over to conversations between the principals. This is especially true of the long central section in which Senta is first introduced while spinning with the other women at Daland's house.
As for the performance itself, I thought it was solid but not particularly overwhelming. Nézet-Séguin's conducting was excellent, but it would have helped if he had had better singers behind him. Michael Volle as the Dutchman and Amber Wagner as Senta were both adequate but little more.
The 1989 production by August Everding is still serviceable but too dark and gloomy for my taste. The sudden appearance of the Dutchman's ghostly crew in Act III should have been much more terrifying than shown here.
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