The Bayreuth Festival started on Sunday evening with “The Flying Dutchman”.
The new production lives mainly from Asmik Grigorian as Senta.
Our premiere review:
At the start of the Bayreuth Festival there was a new production of “The Flying Dutchman”.
After the premiere there were boos for the directing team around Dmitri Tcherniakov.
Conductor Oksana Lyniv was cheered by the 911 allowed guests.
A warning, but not yet known from the factory.
“Leave the Flying Dutchman alone,” Mary sings in the second act, because she knows: She has reserved the guy for herself.
For a targeted shot with the rifle just before the harp-drenched final chords.
Redemption here means vengeance.
For a family tragedy that director Dmitri Tcherniakov rolls up in the Bayreuth Festspielhaus and which is undoubtedly suitable as a Nordic Talking thriller, but has a problem - it only docks at Wagner's multi-layered storm surge piece at certain points.
Director Dmitri Tcherniakov is often booked for psychological interpretations
Because once, as the (over) illustrated overture shows, little H., as the subtitles call him, had to watch his mom being raped by village chief Daland. The mother hanged herself, decades later the grown-up comes back to the stuffy brick settlement. Except for Daland's daughter. And atonement - in the end something like “Götterdämmerung” flickers out of the windows everywhere. But the avenger in the white sailor's sweater did the math without Daland's wife: At Tcherniakov, Mary is upgraded from wet nurse to dark lady of the house.
Tcherniakov is often booked for his psychological interpretations.
As recently with the Munich “Freischütz”, this can go very wrong.
And, see Harry Kupfers legendary “Dutchman”, it has a Bayreuth tradition.
However, Tcherniakov is as far removed from the nerve-racking urgency of this interpretation as Senta is from a happy marriage.
Asmik Grigorian's production is at least 70 percent alive
In general, the premiere stumbles over a lot of inconsistencies. And so he has to rely again and again on Asmik Grigorian, 70 percent of whose energy the performance lives from. Your Senta is sensational and the central figure. Nevertheless, it is never made plausible why this cool, bitchy, freedom-loving girl with a rap touch should fall for this older man: father complex or just a strange love game that she doesn't take seriously?
As soon as Erik appears, everything else is hidden anyway.
A meticulous choreography of characters shows that this is the actual couple.
There is still love between the injured bull and the aggro brat.
She laughs at his pathos, and yet she feels drawn.
As Asmik Grigorian and Eric Cutler make clear in their two duet scenes, these reactions to and repulsive, at the end of which, if Wagner had wanted it, could have included hard sex as reconciliation, that has an enormous musical-theatrical quality.
Standing ovations for Asmik Grigorian
Presumably this is the responsibility of both parties. Bayreuth has not only been waiting for such a senta for a long time: The Grigorian slowly sings into a rage at the first "Johohohe" calls, allows identification and at the same time a mocking distance to sound and, in her unconditionality, singing to prolonged speaking. In the finale, she also had glaring strength, and when the Lithuanian stepped in front of the curtain, 911 approved gala guests were torn from their folding seats, something that hasn't existed in Bayreuth for a long time either.
Cutler is an ideal partner for her.
He has no problems with Erik's tricky situation.
Technically, he is so saddle-stiff that he has the right nuance for every sentence and forms a - also vocal - multi-dimensional psychogram in the constant reaction to Senta.
That Daland is the culprit quickly spreads.
Georg Zeppenfeld's clear-cut design is again a feast for the ears, yet he seems underchallenged.
Attilio Glaser could easily be promoted from helmsman to Erik.
Marina Prudenskaya has a luxury cast as Mary, so it suits the upgrading of the figure.
You won't be completely happy with John Lundgren in the title role.
His icy desperado goes through as a type cast.
But the extreme coverage of the voice, the lack of color, the hollow-cheeked, unsteady singing are disappointing.
Cheers after the premiere for conductor Oksana Lyniv
Dmitri Tcherniakov would have liked to discuss everything that is in this score with Oksana Lyniv. The overture's loud rustling sound is deceptive. Others rush through the piece, relying on the Sturm-Drang charm, the first desk woman on the Green Hill discovers nuances, reflections, moments of questioning, situations of pausing, the finely drawn poetry. Surely there is overwhelming too. But it is even more astonishing how Oksana Lyniv actually conducts the second version of the “Holländers” as such, namely not as an unrestrained early piece, but as a newly balanced variant, especially in the middle voices.
The self-confident festival orchestra follows her, a strong signature, a confident awareness of Bayreuth's acoustics is palpable. You hardly notice that the choirs have been leaked from the rehearsal room. On the contrary: one rarely hears such a restrained, oratorically shaped sailor's choir in the third act. Loud cheers for Oksana Lyniv, just as much rejection for the directing team. Exciting moments like the oppressive dinner at Dalands' and the showdown stand alongside loosely hanging concept threads and poorly crafted choir directing. Perhaps Tcherniakov should simply look for another opera for his basically exciting story.
