ML Hart - Opera: Production Photographs / The Flying Dutchman

	The legend of the Flying Dutchman comes from stories about a ship, a storm, and a defiant captain. Facing certain death by sailing into a storm near the southern tip of Africa in the 17th or 18th century, the captain is accursed for his stubbornness and is condemned to sail the oceans for eternity with a ghostly crew of dead men. Anyone who looks too closely at the ship is doomed as well. In some versions of the story, there is one small hope for the crew: the unfortunate
captain returns to land every seven years in a hopeless search for salvation, because the Dutchman can only find eternal peace in the arms of a faithful woman. Reported sightings of the most famous phantom vessel are occasionally made when the weather off the Cape of Good Hope is stormy.
The sentiment of this legend that Wagner uses - a wanderer finding redemption through the sacrifice of a faithful woman - would be echoed by Alfred Noyes in his 1906 poem "The Highwayman" ("The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees / The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas / The road was a ribbon of moonlight, over the purple moor / And the highwayman came riding, riding, riding...")
second row Senta, daughter of the mercantile captain Daland, has heard the legend of the Dutchman as long as she can remember - and finds herself irresistibly drawn to him. In this production Senta is no innocent child, mooning over an idealized love, but one caught up in full-on obsession - in today's world, she might be a stalker. Her ultimate sacrifice is as much for her own salvation as it is for him. [soprano* Rita Cullis]* For those who might bristle (and rightly so) at the woman-is-only-complete-when-she's-serving-a-man notion, it's important to stay with the whole of this powerful work - every thing and every one in the opera is a symbol weaving together into the themes of faith, trust, redemption, transformation. Stage director and scenic designer David Edwards translates those abstract concepts into what the audience sees on stage.

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top row in block Senta comes face-to-face with the real Dutchman of the legend. She is captivated by her fantasy; the Dutchman sees her as yet another woman doomed to deceive him. Both are obsessed. They stare intently at one another, not moving during Daland's joyous aria - Senta's father sings the praises of the gold the Dutchman has offered for his daughter, recommending each to the other as he would any commodity. [soprano* Rita Cullis, bass Robert Hale, baritone* Daniel Sumegi]
DUTCHMAN As from the mist of times long gone this girl's image speaks to me: as I dreamt of her for restless ages, I see her now before my eyes. ... The dull glow I feel burning here, can I in my misery call it love? Ah, no! It is a yearning for redemption: would that through such an angel it came true!	SENTA Am I deep in a wonderful dream? ... He stands before me, his face lined with suffering, it reveals his terrible grief to me: ... The pain that burns within my breast, ah, this longing, how shall I name it? What you yearn for, salvation, would it came true, poor man, through me!
Senta and the Dutchman sing together here, with the text in German reflecting the convergence of their dreams and destiny. Remember, we're talking strictly about the text here; the music adds yet another dimension - at least! Near the beginning of the duet, the words that end each pair of lines are full rhymes for the character singing them and final-syllable rhymes for each other: the Dutchman sings Zeiten and Ewigkeiten, while Senta has Träumen and Räumen. So they are moving towards each other, but still separate. In the middle section, each voices individual thoughts; but by the final quatrain, the first two lines end with the same rhyme on the same word (brennen and nennen) and then the final two lines reveal the solidarity of their vision by not only rhyming but echoing several of the same words throughout the lines, his and hers:
Ach nein! Die Sehnsucht ist es nach dem Heil: würd es durch solchen Engel mir zuteil!	Wonach mit Sehnsucht es dich treibt, das Heil, würd es, du Ärmster, dir durch mich zuteil!

middle row in block
Erik, Senta's suitor, cannot comprehend her obsession with the legend of the Dutchman. Even though Erik offers, ironically, "a heart true unto death," Senta is eyes-wide-open aware that the normal life the other village girls dream about is not for her. Erik relates a dream in which he saw Daland and another man arrive on a ship, saw Senta run to the stranger's kisses, saw them sail away together. Erik is horrified by this vision, but Senta is passionate, on fire - and at that moment, the door opens and in walk her father... and the "stranger" from Erik's dream, the Dutchman from the portrait.
[tenor John Keyes and soprano Rita Cullis]


last row in block - left The Dutchman and Senta are drawn to each other, each to fullfil the other's destiny. [bass* Robert Hale and soprano Rita Cullis]*	last row in block - right Senta, about to sacrifice herself so the Dutchman can be redeemed, brings meaning to her own life. [soprano* Rita Cullis]*
DUTCHMAN Ah, if you realised the fate that then you would share with me, it would warn you of the sacrifice you make for me, if you swear to be true to me. Your young soul would flee in horror from the ruin to which you condemn it, without woman's noblest virtue, without eternal fidelity.	SENTA I well know woman's sacred duty, take heart, then, unhappy man! Let destiny judge me who can defy its sentence! In the sheer purity of my heart I know what loyalty most demands. To whom I show it, I give it all, true love till death!

next to last row - left At the dramatic ending of the Dutchman's entrance aria, he rips the red silk "sail" to the ground. [bass* Robert Hale]* Johohoe! Johohohoe! Hohohoe! Johoe! Have you met the ship at sea with blood-red sails and black mast? On the high deck, the pale man, the master of the ship, keeps endless watch. - Senta's Ballad	next to last row - right The chorus of seafaring men. In most operas, we think of the chorus rather as background to the main action. They often have some great music to sing, but otherwise... the audience in general doesn't pay much attention. In this opera, though, not only do both the men's and women's choruses perform strong musical scenes, almost interludes between the principal scenes, the stage director has choreographed them as an important visual element as well. And it's "choreographed," not just told where to stand.
	Echoing the horizontal lines of the frameworked set, the chorus moves in rows - less like soldiers, more like dancers - upstage rows would shift one way and move forward, while the downstage rows would counter in the opposite directions. And the movements were exaggerated - a big swing of the leg to the side, arm movement with the stride, pounding the "deck" with harpoons and tools (this part in unison!) A bold, theatrical effect that served to support the music as well as the drama. It made the chorus scenes immediate and important, in no way marking time until the next "major" scene.

bottom The Dutchman comes ashore - as he is fated to do once every seven years - on his quest to find a woman who will be faithful to him until death. [bass* Robert Hale]*

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BEHIND THE SCENES

SCENIC DESIGN

The scenic elements of a production are crucial to the presentation of an opera. Is the audience going to see a traditional, realistic representation of the setting and times? or will it be vague? or something completely different, as is often the case when a production is updated? With a new production, these choices are part of the long-term planning process. But most operas we see on stage have already been produced - while the singers are new each time around, very often a stage director is too. And as the production gets older, the director has more and more freedom to recreate his or her vision, albeit with the given settings.

The sets for this production of The Flying Dutchman were destroyed in a warehouse fire and some scrambling had to be done to find another set, preferably one that was in the same concept, affordable, and available for rental. A very old set was located - when seen close up however, the dilapidated condition called for some drastic reworking.

David Edwards, the not-very-traditional stage director, jumped at the opportunity to have the look of the stage reflect what he was doing with the actors. Much of the story is inside Senta's mind, so an abstraction of reality was the perfect match. Edwards created moving panels upstage that could form horizontal and vertical bands across the stage and salvaged some pieces from the original set: a short pier and steps leading up to it... the prow of Daland's ship... a wall of Daland's house... the hull of the ghost ship [below].

The individual elements were placed on the stage, enhanced by the dark space around them, isolated by strong lighting that was highly theatrical, never meant to be realistic. The bars created by the moving panels were lit from behind with highly intense color. This may sound simple, but stage lights are much brighter (and hotter!) than lighting in a home or office. Colored gels - filters in plastic sheets - are placed in front of the lamp to create color - and it takes a lot of color to make what looks like white light on the stage. So to have light show up in deeply saturated hues - red, orange, green - it takes a lot of filtering. At the beginning of the show, the long bank of lights [seen above] was at stage level and slowly raised as the lights came on - another theatrical reminder that what you are about to see is not "real."

The ghost ship [at right] was part of the original set. More accurately, what's left of the ghost ship was once part of the original set. It would have been ridiculously unbelievable had it been brought on as a "real" ship. The design team was able to cut much of it out, then the lighting designer "painted" it from the inside in an eerie green, blue and red mix of lights. By making it completely unrealistic, it became a powerful symbol of the damnation suffered by the Dutchman and his crew.

The abstract scenic elements provided a context for the audience, allowing them - indeed, requiring them - to focus on the very human drama that was being played out in the story.

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Conductor		Karen Keltner
Director		David Edwards
Set Design		Constantinos Kritikos, David Edwards
xx
Dutchman		Robert Hale
Senta		Rita Cullis
Daland		Daniel Sumegi
Erik		John Keyes
Steersman		Joseph Hu
Mary		Ilse Apéstegui


	San Diego Opera presents
	THE FLYING DUTCHMAN by Richard Wagner
	May 2002

	*THE FLYING DUTCHMAN*
BALLO