Posted: Saturday, April 16, 2016 6:00 pm
From its opening storm at sea to its heaven-bound finale, Richard Wagner’s early opera “The Flying Dutchman” is several shows rolled into one in the rendering that is closing out Virginia Opera’s 2015-16 season.
Everything — emotions, the set, the music — is supersized at the Carpenter Theatre this weekend.
Conductor Adam Turner is commanding nearly 60 musicians from the Richmond Symphony to create Wagner’s lushly ominous and occasionally thunderous array of orchestral sounds in the pit.
Such a mighty instrumental battalion requires singers with voices that can soar above the roar, and director Sara Widzer’s six principal singers do their Wagnerian bidding splendidly, as do the 40 chorus members pulling duty as everything from weavers to deckhands.
The principals are no slouches as actors, either, in this production that originated two years ago at upstate New York’s Glimmerglass Festival.
The title character (bass baritone Wayne Tigges) is a sea captain condemned by Satan to sail the earth forever unless he can find a faithful woman to redeem him. That’s easier said than done because he’s permitted to set foot on dry land only once every seven years.
Enter Senta (Christina Pier, Friday evening’s vocal standout with a pure, rich soprano that would overflow a hall twice the size of the Carpenter Theatre). She’s a Norwegian lass who is caught up in the Flying Dutchman legend, carries his large frame picture with her and is ready to swoon at a moment’s notice if her rock-star idol ever crosses her path.
He does indeed show up in her fishing village, and she swoons, though not for long. Can Senta redeem her Flying Dutchman and release him through the power of love? Can they live and love happily ever after? That’s what “The Flying Dutchman” is all about.
This nearly three-hour opera takes its time, and it occasionally gets silly, as in the eagerness of Senta’s greedy father to match his daughter up with the Dutchman despite his checkered past and uncertain future.
The lighting design, re-created here by Serena Wong from Mark McCullough’s Glimmerglass conception, is a little too dim for our good. It’s sometimes difficult to discern who’s singing in all the gloom.
For the most part, however, this “Flying Dutchman” is a triumph of design. James Noone has built his set on an imposing structure that looks like it was created with a giant Erector Set. A multitude of hanging ropes are put to effective use to suggest everything from a ship’s rigging to the spinning that provides livelihood for the girls in the village. Bathing the backdrop in blood-red to silhouette writhing figures on the ship’s rigging completes the visual allure.
“The Flying Dutchman” ends Virginia Opera’s 2015-16 season on a high note.